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LATER ESSAYS 
1917-1920 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

Four Frenchwomen, 1890. 

Eighteenth-Century Vignettes. 3 series, 1892-96. 

A Paladin of Philanthropy, &c. 1899. 

Side-Walk Studies, 1902. 

Old Kensington Palace, &c, 1910. 

At Prior Park, &c. r 1912. 

"Rosalba's Journal, &c, 1915* 

Also Lives of Hogarth Fielding, Steele, Goldsmith, 
Horace Walpole, Richardson and Fanny Burney. 




THE ABBE EDGEWORTH. 
(1745-1807.) 



LATER ESSAYS 

1917 — 1920 



BY 



AUSTIN DOBSON 



HUMPHREY MILFORD 
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW COPENHAGEN 

NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE CAPE TOWN 
BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS SHANGHAI PEKING 

1921 




PRINTED BY FREDERICK HALL 

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

OXFORD, ENGLAND 



%H>(o$ 



yi 




PREFATORY NOTE 

This, as will be seen from the list at the back of 
the bastard title, adds a tenth volume to the writer's 
Studies, mainly in the Eighteenth Century. The 
essays forming the present instalment appeared in 
the National Review between September, 1917, and 
July, 1920, and are here reprinted under the standing 
permission of the Editor. A few items have, how- 
ever, been added to the closing Causerie. Of these, 
4 Johnsoniana ' and ' Re-reading ' originally came 
out in The Book Monthly ; but ' An Old Magazine ' 
and ' By Way of Preface ' are now published for the 
first time. 

The frontispiece has been reproduced by Mr. Emery 
Walker from the portrait of the Abbe Edgeworth 
made use of for Sneyd Edgeworth's Memoirs of 1815. 
It was engraved in stipple by Anthony Cardon and 
is inscribed ' De St. Aubyn pinxt.' 

Austin Dobson. 
Ealing, 

December, 1920. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

EDWARDS'S CANONS OF CRITICISM 1 

AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY HIPPOCRATES . 25 

* HERMES » HARRIS 46 

THE JOURNEYS OF JOHN HOWARD . . 70 

4 THE LEARNED MRS. CARTER ... 97 

THE ABBfi EDGEWORTH 124 

A CASUAL CAUSERIE 151 

INDEX 174 



EDWARDS'S 
< CANONS OF CRITICISM ' 

Pope, in a letter to Caryll, speaks of having 
pictures of Dryden, Milton, Shakespeare, &c., 
hung about his room, ' that the constant remem- 
brance of them may keep him always humble '. 
To what extent this mental antiseptic protected 
him when in 1721-5 he was editing the last-named 
poet is unrecorded ; but it certainly did not in any 
way influence the successor and collaborator who 
' revised ' his work in 1747. For humility was by 
no means one of the prominent characteristics of 
the Reverend and learned William Warburton. Of 
all critics he was certainly the most ' robustious ' ; of 
all commentators the most dogmatic and domineer- 
ing ; while his controversial language can often only 
be described as insufferably offensive. 1 His hetero- 
geneous erudition was admittedly enormous ; but 
however well equipped as a fighting polemic and 
theologian, his literary judgement was not on a level 
with his pretensions. His conjectural emendations 
of Shakespeare are now generally discredited ; but 
even in his own day, when the study of Shakes- 
peare's text was still in leading-strings, there were 
not wanting readers independent enough to question 
the decrees of the self-constituted legislator whom 
his parasites extolled as an intellectual Colossus. 
One of the most vivacious of the objectors was 
Thomas Edwards, a barrister, of whose ironical 

1 It was of Warburton that Bolingbroke said he had no 
desire to ' wrestle with a chimney-sweeper ' (Rogers's Table- 
Talk, 1856, p. 25). 

B 



2 LATER ESSAYS 

Canons of Criticism it is now proposed to give some 
account. But in this particular instance there is 
so much more to be said of the work and its origin 
than of the writer himself, that it will be convenient 
to reverse the customary order of procedure and 
begin with the book. And this course is the more 
excusable because the scanty facts of Edwards's 
career chiefly concern his closing years. 

In 1747, when, as already stated, Warburton 
issued his eight-volume edition of The Works of 
Shakespear, he had but four predecessors in the 
editorial field — Rowe, Pope, Theobald, and Han- 
mer. First, in 1709, had come Nicholas Rowe, the 
playwright and Poet Laureate, with the earliest 
attempt at a biography. This, the standard eigh- 
teenth-century life, opportunely garnered much 
floating tradition ; but Rowe did little or nothing 
for the rectification of the text. To him, in 1725, 
succeeded Pope, more literary, but less practically 
equipped in stage-craft and in what he contemp- 
tuously called ' the dull duty of an Editor '. As 
might be expected, his ' Preface ', full no doubt of 
good things, is the most memorable part of his 
performance. His notes, however, were sharply 
criticized by a lesser man, Lewis Theobald, the 
typical ' Codrus ' of English verse, so ' distressed ' 
as to be traditionally perpetuated in Hogarth's 
' sky-parlour ',* yet withal scholar and critic enough 
to earn for himself a vindictive pre-eminence in 
the Dunciad as the predecessor of Colley Cibber. It 
was Theobald whose ' lucky guessing ' — that ' lucky 
guessing ' which Jane Austen held has ' always 
some talent in it ' — by its substitution of ' a' babbled 
of green fields ' for the old version, ' a table of green 
fields,' shed parting radiance on the lifelike death- 

1 The ' Distressed Poet ' is supposed to represent Theobald. 



EDWARDS'S ' CANONS OF CRITICISM ' 3 

bed of Falstaff ; and this was by no means Theobald's 
only palpable hit. Moreover, it is to ' poor Tibb's ' 
credit that he endeavoured to interpret his author's 
text not so much by an eighteenth-century standard 
as by the current speech — ' the obsolete and un- 
common phrases ' — of that author's contemporaries. 
Theobald was the third of Warburton's predecessors. 
The fourth (1743-4) was Sir Thomas Hanmer of 
Mildenhall, near Newmarket in Suffolk, a cultivated 
country gentleman, who had been a dignified 
and respected Speaker of the House of Commons. 
As an editor he seems to have held Goldsmith's 
rule that the best commentator is common sense ; 
and, for the rest, to have relied on the typography 
of the Clarendon Press and the artful aid of Frank 
Hayman's weedy designs, as translated by the 
6 sculptures ' of Gravelot. Then, at length, thought- 
fully trumpeted beforehand in volume ix of Birch's 
General Dictionary and The History of the Works 
of the Learned, came the announcement of ' a 
more complete and accurate edition ' from the Rev. 
William Warburton. At the date of publication, 
May 1747, 1 Warburton had not been long married 
to Miss Gertrude Tucker, the niece of Ralph Allen 
of Prior Park, and had recently been appointed to 
the preachership of Lincoln's Inn Chapel, an office 
which had been procured for him by ' silver- 
tongued ' Murray, afterwards Lord Mansfield. But 
he was already famous as the author of the never- 
completed Divine Legation of Moses, and had 
established himself in the affection of Pope by his 

1 The Works of Shakespear. By Mr. Pope and Mr. War- 
burton, in 8 vols. 8vo, price £2 8s. {Gentleman's Magazine for 
May 1747, xvii. 252). The title further professed to give the 
' Genuine Text ' as ' restored from the Blunders of the first 
Editors, and the Interpolations of the two Last ' (i.e. Theobald 
and Hanmer). 

B2 



4 LATER ESSAYS 

adroit vindication of the nebulous orthodoxy of 
the Essay on Man — a work which, by the way, he 
had formerly assailed. 1 As a natural consequence 
of this new alliance, Pope's labours on Shakespeare 
had assumed an exaggerated value in his eyes, and 
on his title-page he figured as Pope's coadjutor. 
But when, in 1747, the joint result at last appeared, 
Pope was dead. 

So also, for the matter of that, were Hanmer and 
Theobald, though — to do Warburton justice — there 
is no reason for supposing that their presence or 
absence on this planet would have prevented him 
from abusing them to the full of his bent. This he 
proceeded to do in his 4 Preface '. Both of them, 
if we are to believe him, had made unwarrantable 
use of his material : ' The One [Theobald] was 
recommended to me as a poor Man ; the Other 
[Hanmer] as a poor Critic : and to each of them, 
at different times, I communicated a great number 
of Observations, which they managed, as they 
saw fit, to the Relief of their several Distresses. 
As to Mr. Theobald, who wanted Money, I allowed 
him to print what I gave him for his own Advantage : 
and he allowed himself in the Liberty of taking 
one Part for his own, and sequestering another for 
the Benefit, as I supposed, of some future Edition. 
But, as to the Oxford Editor [Hanmer], who wanted 
nothing but what he might very well be without, 
the Reputation of a Critic, I could not so easily 
forgive him for trafficking with my Papers without 
my Knowledge ; and, when that Project fail'd, 
for employing a number of my Conjectures in his 
Edition against my expressed Desire not to have 
that Honour done unto me.' 

There is more to the same effect ; but seeing that 
1 Prior's Life of Malone, 1860, pp. 430-1. 



EDWARDS'S ' CANONS OF CRITICISM ' 5 

Warburton's own biographer candidly confesses 
that ' these passages contain much, we fear, that 
is disingenuous, not to say false ', x it is only waste 
of time to discuss them ; and although it is plain 
that Warburton had personal relations with both 
Theobald and Hanmer, it is hopeless, at this date, 
to decide exactly how much he lent to, or borrowed 
from, either of them. 2 But — at the risk of antici- 
pating — it is instructive to contrast here with 
Warburton's malevolent and skilfully generalized 
indictment of his forerunners, honest old Johnson's 
treatment of Warburton himself when, eighteen 
years later, Warburton, in his turn, came up for 
judgement as a Shakespeare commentator. It is 
true that Warburton was alive when Johnson 
wrote ; and that, with Voltaire, Johnson rightly 
recognized the obligation of ' tenderness to living 
reputation '. He also respected Warburton's extra- 
ordinary learning. ' The table is always full, Sir,' 
he said of the miscellaneous bill of fare provided in 
the Divine Legation. ' He brings things from the 
north and the south, and from every quarter.' And 
he also cherished a praiseworthy gratitude to War- 
burton for a commendatory word respecting some 
of his own tentative and unfriended efforts in 
Shakespeare criticism. 3 But, although, for these 
reasons, his deliverance is perhaps a trifle laboured, 
especially when compared with the weighty passages 
on editorial futility by which it is succeeded, these 
considerations did not prevent him from writing 
what must always be regarded as the last word on 

1 Watson's Life of Warburton, 1863, pp. 300-1. 

2 ' Such improvements as he [Warburton] introduced are 
mainly borrowed from Theobald and Hanmer ' (Life of 
Shakespeare, by Sir Sidney Lee, 1898, p. 318). 

3 Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth, 
1745. 



6 LATER ESSAYS 

Warburton's Shakespear : ' The original and pre- 
dominant errour of his [Warburton's] commentary, 
is acquiescence in his first thoughts ; that pre- 
cipitation which is produced by consciousness of 
quick discernment ; arid that confidence which 
presumes to do, by surveying the surface, what 
labour only can perform, by penetrating the bottom. 
His notes exhibit sometimes perverse interpreta- 
tions, and sometimes improbable conjectures ; he 
at one time gives the author more profundity of 
meaning than the sentence admits, and at another 
discovers absurdities where the sense is plain to 
every other reader. But his emendations are 
likewise often happy and just ; and his interpreta- 
tion of obscure passages learned and sagacious. 
Of his notes I have commonly rejected those against 
which the general voice of the publick has exclaimed, 
or which their own incongruity immediately con- 
demns and which, I suppose, the author himself 
would desire to be forgotten. Of the rest, to part 
I have given the highest approbation, by inserting 
the offered reading in the text ; part I have left 
to the judgement of the reader, as doubtful, though 
specious, and part I have censured without reserve, 
but I am sure without bitterness of malice, and, 
I hope, without wantonness of insult.' 1 

This restrained, and even indulgent judgement 
would probably at no time have satisfied the 
inordinate vanity of Warburton, least of all when, 
in 1765, he first read it in type, having in the 
interim shouldered his way through various prefer- 
ments to the Bishopric of Gloucester; and, pre- 
sumably, long since spent the five hundred pounds 
(more than Johnson or Pope received) which he 
had extracted from Tonson for the copyright. 
1 Johnson's Works, 1810, ii. 177-8. 



EDWARDS'S 4 CANONS OF CRITICISM ' 7 

With commendable prudence, he said nothing in 
public ; but he grumbled in writing to his' henchman 
Hurd and another correspondent about the ' folly ' 
and ' malignity ' of ' this Johnson ' who had ven- 
tured to question his authority as a Shakespeare 
commentator. Of course, by this time, Johnson's 
praise or dispraise could matter little to Warburton, 
whose ' chimerical conceits ' (the phrase is Malone's) 
had already been sufficiently exposed by humbler 
men. One of these was Dr. Zachary Grey, the 
superabundant notes to whose edition of Butler's 
Hudibras Warburton had characterized as an 
4 execrable heap of nonsense ', though he himself 
had contributed to them. Another was John Upton, 
later the editor of Spenser, who, with special 
reference to Warburton, put forth a series of 
Observations on Shakespeare. But the most memor- 
able of the group was Thomas Edwards, to whom we 
owe The Canons of Criticism. 

Although there is a legend that Edwards had 
once met Warburton in Allen's library at Prior Park, 
and had successfully confuted him (before his 
wife) about a passage from a Greek author, con- 
cerning which Warburton had manifestly relied on 
a French translation, there is no ground for supposing 
that Edwards was actuated by any hostile feeling. 
In fact, not long after the Canons had appeared, 
he wrote that he did not know Warburton personally, 
which, even if there were not other discrepancies, 
would be fatal to the story. Edwards was not 
a professed critic ; indeed, as far as we are aware, 
though liberally educated, he had never been either 
at a public school or a university. But he was 
a natural scholar, devoted in particular to Spenser, 
Milton, and Shakespeare, whom he had studied 
in order to comprehend their meaning rather than 



8 LATER ESSAYS 

to write about them. Warburton's fantastic and 
needless variations honestly roused in him that 
righteous indignation — ^the ' noble anger ' of King 
Lear — which Bishop Butler has declared to be ' not 
only innocent, but a generous movement of mind '. 
And Warburton, in his full-blown arrogance, had 
afforded him an excellent opportunity for retort — 
nay, had even indicated the very form it should 
take. He had once intended — his ' Preface ' 
loftily announced — to have given his readers 
' a body of Canons, for literal Criticism ', drawn out 
in form ; as well such as concern the art in general 
as those that arise from the nature and circumstances 
of the author's works in particular ; but these uses — 
he complacently added — might be well supplied by 
what he had occasionally said on the subject in 
the course of his remarks. He had also designed 
to give ' a general alphabetic Glossary ' of peculiar 
terms ; but as those were explained in their proper 
places, there seemed the less occasion for such an 
' Index '. There could be no more inviting provoca- 
tion to the profane than this pronouncement, and 
Edwards availed himself of it. He forthwith set to 
work to frame a burlesque code of Canons, deduced 
directly from Warburton's notes, with illustrations 
drawn from that writer's emendations. To these 
he subjoined a Glossary based — of course from his 
own point of view — on Warburton's indications. 
His essay, first issued in April 1748, by M. Cooper 
of Paternoster Row, as a shilling pamphlet, 1 was 
advertised as a Supplement to Mr. Warburton's 
Edition of Shakespear ' collected from the Notes 

1 Gentleman's Magazine for April 1748 (xviii. 192). The 
date satisfactorily disposes of the allegation that Edwards 
had hindered the sale of Warburton's book, since that book 
had appeared nearly a twelvemonth earlier {Canons of 
Criticism, 3rd ed., 1750, p. 10) 



EDWARDS'S ' CANONS OF CRITICISM ' 9 

in that celebrated Work, and proper to be bound 
up with it ' — the authorship being ascribed to 
a ' Gentleman of Lincoln's Inn '. Later issues 
changed the title to The Canons of Criticism and 
Glossary, &c. 

It would be superfluous to reprint the twenty- 
five Canons which Edwards prefixed to his pamphlet, 
as they are all much on the same lines ; but a few 
may be reproduced as specimens. No. I runs : 

A Professed Critic has a right to declare, that his 
Author wrote whatever He thinks he ought to have 
written ; with as much positiveness, as if He had 
been at his Elbow. 

No. II. He has a right to alter any passage 
which He does not understand. 

No. IV. Where he does not like an expression, 
and yet cannot mend it ; He may abuse his Author 
for it. 

No. V. Or He may condemn it, as a foolish 
interpolation. 

No. VII. He may find out obsolete words, or 
coin new ones ; and put them in the place of such, 
as He does not like, or does not understand. 

No. IX. He may interpret his Author so ; as to 
make him mean directly contrary to what He says. 

These are some only of the Canons, but a small 
handsel will suffice. To borrow the memorable 
words of Captain Cuttle's oracular friend, ' The 
bearing of these observations lays in the application 
on them ' rather than in any gnomic neatness they 
possess ; and this application Edwards goes on to 
supply with considerable gusto. In this respect 
one may draw on him more liberally. Some of the 
examples he adduces are certainly marvels of 
editorial ineptitude. Thus when Othello (Act III, 



10 LATER ESSAYS 

sc. iii) speaks of ' the ear-pi ereing fife ' (now almost 
as ancient a friend as the journalistic ' welkin '), 
Warburton would substitute ' th' fear-'spersing 
fife ', on the unaccountable ground that ' piercing 
the ear is not an effect on the hearers '. His own 
ear must have been lamentably at fault since, in 
another place, he proposes to read, for the c Whoso 
draws a sword, 'tis present death ' of 1 Henry VI, 
Act III, sc. iv, the unspeakable ' Whoso draws 
a sword i' th' presence 't's death ' — a line which, 
if we fail to follow Edwards in thinking that it 
seems ' penned for Cadmus when in the state of 
a serpent ', certainly proves that the ' Professed 
Critic ', with the modern parodist, liked 

to dock the smaller parts-o'-speech, 
As we curtail the already cur-tailed cur. 1 

Another entirely unnecessary alteration is where 
the Fool in King Lear says (Act III, sc. ii) : ' I'll 
speak a prophecy, or e'er I go.' This Warburton, 
on the pitiful pretence that ' or e'er I go is not 
English ', amends into : ' I'll speak a proph'cy, 
or two, e'er I go.' It is not necessary, at present, 
to give, as Edwards does, and mostly from the 
Bible, a page of illustrations defending the use of 
the locution ' or e'er '. It may, however, be urged, 
perhaps not unreasonably, that Warburton's 
emendations are more than a hundred and seventy 
years old ; and that he wrote before Bartlett's and 
Mrs. Cowden-Clarke's indispensable Concordances, 
to say nothing of the glossaries of Dyce and his 
successors. 2 And there is something, too, in War- 
burton's complaint to a sympathetic friend that 
' to discover the corruption in an author's text, 

1 Calverley's Fly Leaves, 2nd ed., 1872, p. 113. 

2 E. g. the excellent Shakespeare Glossary of Mr. C. T. 
Onions, 1911. 



EDWARDS'S ' CANONS OF CRITICISM ' 11 

and by a happy sagacity to restore it to sense, is 
no easy task : and when the discovery is made, 
then to cavil at the conjecture, to propose an 
equivalent, and defend nonsense, by producing 
out of the thick darkness it occasions a weak and 
faint glimmering of sense ... is the easiest, as well 
as dullest, of all literary efforts \* That is so, 
unquestionably, when, in both cases, the result is 
naught. Who, however, would seek to better 
' a' babbled of green fields ' ! Here, in truth, the 
critic is ' on a level with the author '. But where is 
the ' happy sagacity ' — the curiosa felicitas — of 
Warburton's ' enlard ' for ' enlarge ' 2 in the 4 and 
doth enlarge his rising ' (2 Henry IV, Act I, sc. i), 
a perfectly legitimate alternative for ' increase his 
army '. Or where again is the necessity for con- 
verting ' denier ' into ' taniere ' in ' My dukedom 
to a beggarly denier ' (Richard III, Act I, sc. ii), 
odds — it may be noted in passing — as intelligibly 
extreme as the eighteenth-century ' All Lombard 
Street to a China orange '. ' Denier ' is the twelfth 
part of a sou ; but 4 taniere ', even if, as Warburton 
says, it may be taken to mean 4 a hut or cave ' 
(which is by no means its ordinary signification), 
is a suggestion so far-fetched as scarcely to be 
worth the carriage. But perhaps the most astound- 
ing of Warburton's amendments is his correction 
of the much-discussed couplet in Amiens 's song 
(As You Like It, Act II, sc. vii) : 

Thy tooth is not so keen, 

Because thou art not seen. 
Warburton holds that ' Without doubt, Shakespeare 
wrote "Because thou art not sheen"' (obsolete 

1 Letters from a late Eminent Prelate, 2nd ed., 1809, p. 368. 

2 Shakespeare himself uses * enlard ' in its sense of ' fatten' 
in Troilus and Cressida, Act II, sc. iii. 



12 LATER ESSAYS 

for ' shining '). This is more than ' midsummer 
madness ', it is sheer academic amentia, 1 and instead 
of making matters clearer, serves solely to obscure 
what is obvious. 

These illustrations might easily be extended by 
going farther afield. But, at this time of the day, 
it is not necessary to prove Warburton's self- 
sufficient perversity up to the hilt. One of the 
blunders which aroused the mirth of Edwards, and 
the discovery of which disturbed his victim much 
as a banderilla might be supposed to irritate a bull, 
was, it is possible, no more than an error of the press, 
though a most inconvenient one. In referring to 
Cinthio's Hecatommithi, a Shakespearean source, 
Pope had used the contraction, ' Dec. 8, Nov. 5, 5 
which Warburton's over-zealous printer had ampli- 
fied into ' December 8, November 5 ', whereas, if 
expanded at all, it should have been ' Decade 8, 
Novel 5 ' ; and matters were not improved when, 
to Warburton's angry retort, Edwards gleefully 
rejoined that a mistake of the same kind had been 
made in speaking of a quotation from the Faerie 
Queene. There is, however, no lack of real aberra- 
tion in Warburton's notes ; and if our object were 
to do more than justify the protests of Edwards, 
it would, as we have said, be easy to ' enlard ' the 
schedule. What, for instance, could be the possible 
good of discussing the following senseless comment 
on the ' prayers from preserved souls ' of Measure 
for Measure (Act II, sc. ii) — ' The metaphor is 
taken from fruits, preserved in sugar ' ? Or, from 
examples under Canon II : ' He [the Critic] has 

1 The most intelligible variation is Staunton's ' Because 
thou art foreseen '. Surely, however, no revision is required. 
One need not ' swear to the truth of a song ' — even by 
Shakespeare. 



EDWARDS'S 4 CANONS OF CRITICISM » 13 

a right to alter any passage which He does not 
understand,' the following, ' The Fixure of her eye 
has motion in 't ' {Winter's Tale, Act V, sc. iii, 
where Hermione is personating a statue) ? Says 
Warburton : ' This is sad nonsense. We should 
read " The Fissure of her eye ", i. e. — the Socket ' — 
a suggestion which might have come from the 
Damasippus of Horace. It is sufficient to say that 
fissure means a ' split ' and not a 4 socket ', while 
4 fixure ' is good Shakespearean for ■ fixedness '. 
This trick of replacing Shakespeare's word by 
another that resembles it, is part of Warburton's 
modus operandi, though he may have caught the 
device from the ' babbled ' for 4 table ' of Theobald . 
Thus, he puts, not only ' sheen ' for ' seen', but 
4 wing ' for ' sing ', * hymn ' for ' him ', ' mew ' for 
4 few ', 4 blending ' for ' bending ', ' hallows ' for 
4 allows ', ' tallies ' for 4 dallies ', 4 vowels ' for 
4 bowels ', and so forth — variations which, in every 
case, serve simply to support Johnson's preference 
for the older readings, and enforce his position that 
conjecture, though it be sometimes unavoidable, 
should not be 4 wantonly nor licentiously indulged \ x 
Warburton's notes are, in truth, a lucky-bag of 
lapses, into which one may plunge anywhere with 
the certitude of finding something to rival that 
real, or imagined, pedagogue (from Boeotia) who 
proposed, in lieu of the authorized version, to read 
4 stones in the running brooks, Sermons in books ' ; 2 
or that other egregious wiseacre, fabled by Mr. 
Punch, who made the remarkable discovery that 

1 Of course, Warburton — as Johnson says — sometimes 
scores. But his failures are far more frequent than his 
successes ; and it is with his failures that Edwards is 
concerned. 

2 This, I learn, is wrong. The emendation is said to have 
really originated with a too literal type-setter. 



14 LATER ESSAYS 

Yorick was Hamlet's father because, in handling 
Yorick's skull, Hamlet said ' Pah ! ' 

To give an idea of Warburton's anger and 
astonishment at the onslaught of Edwards would 
require a string of those preparatory similes which 
Fielding employs so effectively to introduce a 
thunderbolt. Warburton had no doubt counted on 
unqualified approbation ; or, at the worst (if there 
could be a worst !), on the conventional homage 
usually accorded to eminent personages who take 
up unfamiliar tasks under pretence of pastime. 
But that the author of the Divine Legation should 
be ' scotched and notched like a carbonado ' * by 
a nameless nobody — a mere Inns of Court amateur — 
was a thing to make angels weep. His indignation 
was irrepressible ; and he exhibited his resentment 
in the most unworshipful manner. Public reply 
was, of course, out of the question — probably he 
felt that Edwards was far too ' cunning of fence \ 
But he poured contempt on him privately in all 
companies ; and, as opportunity offered, inserted 
spiteful and irrelevant passages about him in the 
notes to Pope on which he was engaged. In the 
Essay on Criticism, referring to Edwards by name, 
he spoke of him disdainfully as a critic having 
neither parts nor learning, a ' Fungoso ' 2 of Lin- 
coln's Inn ; and in the fourth book of the Dunciad, 
taking advantage of Pope's line about the children 
of Dullness : 

Who study Shakespeare at the Inns of Court 

1 Warburton's definition of ' carbonado ', after Pope, is 
perversely characteristic. He says it should be ' carbmado ', 
and that ' carbinadoed ' means marked with wounds made 
by a carabine ! 

2 ' Fungoso ' is one of the characters in Ben Jonson's 
Every Man out of His Humour. Pope mentioned him in the 
Essay on Criticism. 



EDWARDS'S ' CANONS OF CRITICISM ' 15 

(a line which had assuredly no connexion whatever 
with Edwards), he delivered himself of a scurrilous, 
and, at this date, rather unintelligible tirade 
against his adversary, on whose birth and social 
status he cast invidious reflections, and further 
stigmatized him as a ' Mushroom ', a ' Caliban ' 
for politeness, a ' Grub street critic run to seed ' — 
and so forth, all of which, in an ecclesiastic of 
eminence occupying the pulpit of Ussher and 
Tillotson, was most discreditable and deplorable. 

Edwards, who had been quietly amplifying his 
evidence for enlarged editions of the Canons, was 
moved by these things to abandon his anonymity ; 
and he did so in the later issues. He was manifestly 
wounded by the attempt to ' degrade him of his 
gentility ', though he did not condescend (as he 
might have done) to retort specifically to Warburton 
in this respect. But he naturally, and successfully, 
vindicated his right, equally with Warburton, to 
study Shakespeare, if he pleased ; and to laugh, 
if he chose, at ' unscholar-like blunders ', ' crude 
and far-fetched conceits,' and ' illiberal and in- 
decent reflections ', if they were ' put-off upon 
the world as a standard of true criticism '. Finally, 
he quoted Scaliger with crushing effect. ' If,' says 
he, ' a person's learning is to be judged of by his 
reading, nobody can deny Eusebius the character 
of a learned man ; but if he is to be esteemed 
learned, who has shown judgement together with 
his reading, Eusebius is not such.' Here he certainly 
hits Warburton ' i' the clout \ At the same time 
he dedicated his book to Warburton as the person 
with whom it had originated ; and he thanked him 
ironically for the ' civil treatment, so becoming 
a Gentleman and a Clergyman ', which he had 
received at his hands. 



16 LATER ESSAYS 

Edwards, during the rest of his life, continued to 
swell the bill against Warburton by further additions 
to the Canons, in many of which he was assisted by 
a friend, Mr. Richard Roderick, F.S.A. and F.R.S., 
a fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and 
a son of the Master. In the contest with Warburton, 
Edwards had unquestionably the best of the battle. 
He was on the right side, and Warburton on the 
wrong. The labours of Edwards have now no doubt 
been surpassed by later students with larger 
facilities and ampler resources. But ' Warburton 
on Shakespeare ' (like 4 Lauder on Milton ' in 
Hogarth's Beer Street) must have long since travelled 
irretrievably to ' Mr. Pastern, the trunk-maker, 
in St. Paul's Church-yard ', while Warton pro- 
phesied truly when he said that the great man's 
4 attacks on Mr. Edwards were not of sufficient 
weight to weaken the effects of his excellent Canons 
of Criticism ', which he also characterized as 
4 allowed by all impartial critics to have been 
decisive and judicious '. Walpole, too, who fre- 
quently contrives to be on the side of posterity, 
wrote to Zouch that Warburton's ' preposterous 
notes . . . would have died of their own folly, though 
Mr. Edwards had not put them to death with the 
keenest wit in the world '. And Akenside (who had 
his own quarrel with the ' tongue-doughty Pedant ') 
went further still in his enthusiasm. He addressed 
an ode to Edwards, in which the 4 Swan of Avon ' 
himself is made to thank his apologist personally 
for clearing his tomb of Warburton's ' conceits '. 

The sixth edition of the Canons was published by 
Bathurst in 1758, after Edwards's death. Besides 
including 4 Remarks on Shakespear ' by Roderick, 1 

1 Roderick was also a rhymer, and preceded Edwards in 
Dodsley with, inter alia, a translation of Lope de Vega's 
sonnet on sonnet-writing. 



EDWARDS'S ' CANONS OF CRITICISM ' 17 

who had died in August 1756, it comprises all 
Edwards's acknowledged literary remains. These 
consist of a little orthographical paper entitled 
' An Account of the Trial of the letter Y, alias Y ', 
and a number of sonnets, thirteen of which had 
already appeared in the second volume of Dodsley's 
Collection. Their interest lies less in their matter than 
in their form ; and the more ambitious of them — 
namely, those concerned with Shakespeare, Spenser, 
and Warburton — might be strengthened by a dash 
of Dryden's direct vocabulary. The prevailing 
note is reflective and domestic. But they deserve 
consideration on account of their technical excellence. 
All but four of them are on the Italian model, to 
which Edwards's attention had been directed by 
a friend, Daniel Wray, the titular recipient of two 
of them ; and the conjectural date of their com- 
position, 1745-57, entitles them, if only as a sustained 
effort, to a prominent place in the mid-eighteenth- 
century revival of the Miltonic sonnet. In fact, 
their only serious competitors are Gray's isolated 
essay in this way on the death of Richard West, 
written at Stoke in 1742, and that of Benjamin 
Stillingfleet to Dr. John Williamson, 1 which Todd 
in his Milton dates 1746. But one of Edwards's 
sonnets, which can scarcely have been the first, is 
addressed to Lyttelton on his Conversion of St. Paul, 
published in November 1747. On the other hand, 
Gray's beautiful poem, as- — with all due deference 
to Wordsworth — we must continue to regard it, 
is not strictly Miltonic in structure, while those of 

1 Dr. Williamson (d. 1763) was chaplain to the English 
Factory at Lisbon, where Fielding met him in 1754 and 
spoke very highly of his abilities ; but from Stillingfleet' s 
sonnet, he seems to have never fulfilled the expectations of 
his friends. His papers perished in the Lisbon earthquake. 

C 



18 LATER ESSAYS 

Edwards and his ' blue-stocking ' competitor rigor- 
ously play the game. 

This brings us at last to the scanty particulars 
of Edwards's life, the most authoritative of which 
are derived from the publisher's ' Advertisement ' 
prefixed to the sixth edition of the Canons. He 
was born in 1699. He was still a young man when, 
by his father's death, he inherited a ' small estate ' 
of 143 acres at Pitshanger (Pitch-hanger on the old 
maps), a manor, or manor-farm, in the parish of 
Ealing, Middlesex. He is said to have received 
a ' liberal Education ', and, like his father and grand- 
father, became a barrister, entering in 1721 at 
Lincoln's Inn. From No. v of his sonnets, ' On 
a Family-Picture,' we learn he had four brothers 
and four sisters, all of whom died before him, 
leaving him, in his own words, c Single, unpropp'd, 
and nodding to my fall '. ' Single ' here, probably, 
means no more than 4 solitary ' ; but he never 
married, though another sonnet clearly indicates an 
' Amoret ', either disdainful or deceased. Nor did 
he ever seriously practise the law; but devoted 
himself to literature and the cultivation of his 
property. Until 1740 he lived chiefly at Pitshanger ; 
but in that year he moved permanently to Turrick 
(now Terrick), an estate near Ellesborough in 
Buckinghamshire, where he resided until his death 
in 1757. His constitution, as may be inferred from 
the mortality in his family, cannot have been strong, 
and apparently unfitted him for anything but the 
6 retirement's unambitious shade ' which he de- 
siderated and attained. 

But though he professed to live the life of a 
recluse, his sonnets prove that he had a sufficient 
circle of friends. Some of his efforts, those, for 
example, to Lord Chancellor Hardwicke and 



EDWARDS'S c CANONS OF CRITICISM ' 19 

Archbishop Herring, were no doubt merely votive 
and complimentary ; others imply closer relations. 
Daniel Wray, for example, he had known from 
childhood, and Wray must have been a notable 
man. He was not only the Deputy Teller of the 
Exchequer to Philip Yorke, later second Earl of 
Hardwicke, but he was a learned archaeologist who 
became a Trustee of the British Museum. What 
is more, he was one of the contributors to those 
famous Athenian Letters of 1741-3, which were 
once regarded as the best existing commentary on 
Thucydides. 1 And Edwards seems to have known 
several of the other contributors. Charles Yorke, 
Philip's brilliant younger brother, whom he apostro" 
phizes familiarly as ' Charles ' in Sonnet xv, wrote 
the ' Preface ' to the work ; and Edwards addresses 
sonnets to three others of the company — to Philip 
Yorke himself, to the Rev. J. Lawry, and Dr. William 
Heberden, the ultimus Romanorum of Johnson and 
the ' virtuous and faithful Heberden ' of Cowper. 
For Heberden, also Richardson's doctor, Edwards 
had a sincere affection. Heberden it was, he says, 
who caused him to exchange the ' crouded Town ' 
and the valley of the Brent for the ' purer air ' of 
the Chiltern Hills. It is possible, also, that Sonnet 
xlii, ' To Miss ,' discreetly veils the shrink- 
ing delicacy of Miss Catherine Talbot, the bosom 
friend of Eliza Carter of Deal, afterwards the 
translator of Epictetus. For Miss Talbot, young 
as she was in 1740, was one of the Athenian corre- 
spondents. 

Another of Edwards's friends of long standing 
was Richard Owen Cambridge, Walpole's ' Cam- 
bridge the Everything '. Cambridge had been 
born in 1717, and entered at Lincoln's Inn in 1737. 
1 See post, p. 38. 
C 2 



20 LATER ESSAYS 

Edwards often visited him in his Gloucester home, at 
Wheatenhurst on the Stroud, a tributary of the 
Severn ; and Sonnet i refers specifically to his 
participation in those promenades en bateau on 
Sabrina's flood \ which were Cambridge's hobby 
and delight. Edwards must frequently have taken 
a seat in the great pleasure-boat after the Venetian 
pattern, painted with Samuel Scott's panels, and 
carrying thirty cabin passengers ; or adventured 
in those more perilous craft which his host had 
modelled on the fragile proas Anson had sought to 
introduce from the Malay archipelago. One of 
Cambridge's associates, who had lived on the same 
staircase with him at Lincoln's Inn, was the parodist 
Isaac Hawkins Browne. Browne, too, was doubtless 
of these water parties ; and in any case must have 
been known to Edwards, since Edwards devotes 
two sonnets to him, Nos. xvi and xvii. In the 
former he acknowledges Browne's influence on his 
own versification ; in the latter he invites him to 
return to his ' native language ', a transparent 
reference to the lengthy Latin poem by Browne on 
the Immortality of the Soul, an English translation 
of which by Soame Jenyns appears in Dodsley's 
sixth volume. Browne's parodies and some mis- 
cellaneous pieces had already figured in volume ii, 
where, also, he had written an ode to Charles Yorke. 
Of yet another friend of Edwards there are definite 
indications, since he sends him, with No. xlv, 
a batch of sonnets. This was Arthur Onslow, the 
genial and cultivated Speaker of the House of 
Commons from 1728 to 1761. At Imber or Ember 
Court, a pleasant country seat near Thames Ditton, 
with the Mole running through its grounds, Onslow 
was wont to draw about him a host of sympathetic 
or lettered guests. Edwards's Sonnet xxviii is 



EDWARDS'S ' CANONS OF CRITICISM ' 21 

addressed to his son George, afterwards first Earl 
of Onslow. 

One of the visitors at Imber Court was Samuel 
Richardson, formerly an ' obscure man ', who, as 
he boasted at Bath, was eventually ' admitted to 
the company of the first characters in the Kingdom '. 
When he made the acquaintance of Edwards is 
uncertain ; but the correspondence between them — 
or at least that portion of it which is printed by 
Mrs. Barbauld * — extends over the last eight years 
of Edwards's life and is the main authority for the 
remaining facts of his biography. In January 1749 
Edwards had evidently visited Richardson at 
North End, Fulham, and addressed to him an 
ecstatic appreciation of Clarissa, the three final 
volumes of which had not been long issued. A year 
later he also sent him a laudatory sonnet on the 
same theme, which its delighted recipient speedily 
set up in type, and a copy was forthwith dispatched 
by Edwards to Onslow, to go under Richardson's 
portrait. As the sonnet is unimpeachable in form, 
and no worse for its recollection, in the opening 
quatrain, of the quotation from Horace with which 
Fielding had greeted Clarissa in No. 5 of the 
Jacobite's Journal, 2 it may here (despite the obscuring 
inversion of line 5) serve for a taste of Edwards's 
quality as a sonnet writer : 

Master of the heart, whose magic skill 
The close recesses of the Soul can find, 
Can rouse, becalm, and terrifie the mind, 

Now melt with pity, now with anguish thrill, 

1 Corr. of Richardson, 1804, iii. 1-137. 

3 Pectus inaniter angit, 

irritat, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet, 
ut magus. 

Hon. Epp. ii. 1. 211-3. 



22 LATER ESSAYS 

Thy moral page while virtuous precepts fill, 
Warm from the heart, to mend the Age design'd, 
Wit, strength, truth, decency, are all conjoin'd 

To lead our Youth to Good, and guard from 111. 

O long enjoy, what thou so well hast won, 
The grateful tribute of each honest heart 
Sincere, nor hackney'd in the ways of men ; 
At each distressful stroke their true tears run, 
And Nature, unsophisticate by Art, 

Owns and applauds the labors of thy pen. 

Edwards must at once have been made free of 
the North End consistory of ' Muses and Graces ', 
for in the second letter printed by Mrs. Barbauld, 
he has already become acquainted with two of 
Richardson's ' high-life ' touchstones, Mrs. Delany's 
clever Irish friend, Miss Anne Donnellan, and 
Miss Sutton. (The latter was apparently a little 
6 difficult ', as her father, Sir Robert Sutton, had 
been Warburton's earliest patron.) He had also 
visited Miss Hester (or Hecky) Mulso, in later 
years Mrs. Chapone, who was already known (to 
her circle) as an ode- writer. She had a beautiful 
voice, which induced Edwards to call her ' the 
Linnet ', and they speedily interchanged compli- 
ments in verse. The contribution of Edwards is 
Sonnet xxiv in the Canons. He was also ' sonnetized ' 
by Miss Highmore, the daughter of the painter. 
He must have listened, in the famous North End 
Grotto, to the readings from Sir Charles Grandison, 
then in the making, although he does not actually 
figure in the little picture which the clever young 
lady aforesaid made of one of these seances. But 
that he was sometimes in the audience on these 
occasions is plain from the fact that he had the 
courage to remonstrate with Richardson respecting 



EDWARDS'S ' CANONS OF CRITICISM ' 23 

certain injudicious utterances in Miss Harriet 
Byron's letters, which — needless to say — Richard- 
son hastily expunged. Miss Susannah Highmore, 
it may be added, subsequently married the Rev. John 
Duncombe, the author of the Feminead : or, Female 
Genius, 1 a poem to which Edwards, notwithstanding 
his dislike to ' omne quod exit in ad ' (he must have 
forgotten Cambridge's Scribleriad !), was easily 
reconciled, since it not only contained portraits of 
those bright particular stars, Miss ' Eugenia ' 
Highmore and Miss i Delia ' Mulso, but made 
complimentary reference to himself. 

The Edwards-Richardson correspondence, as we 
have it, is not particularly fruitful in literary gossip. 
There are some oft-quoted outbursts, on Richard- 
son's part, against Fielding, to which Edwards, as 
might be anticipated, replies in kindred vein ; and 
there are references to Richardson's troubles with 
the Irish pirates, Messrs. Exshaw, Wilson, and 
Saunders. Richardson seems to have been anxious 
to induce his friend to follow up the Canons by some 
more extended critical or editorial work. He 
suggested that he should edit his ' ever-honoured 
Spenser ', a new edition of whom was in contempla- 
tion. But Edwards was not to be persuaded. He 
knew his own limitations ; and he shrank from the 
responsibilities of the task. His standard of editing 
was as high as that afterwards so amply outlined by 
Johnson in his Proposals of 1755 ; and he was 
as heartily sick of the hidebound Warburtons and 
Newtons 2 as he was of the vamped-up subscription 
issues of the booksellers, with their obtrusive 
typography and their copperplates c made in 

1 Pearch's Collection, 1775, iv. 172. 

2 i.e. Thomas Newton, Bishop of Bristol, who edited 
Paradise Lost. 



24 LATER ESSAYS 

Holland '. Richardson next tried to tempt him 
with Pope — with a rival edition to that of War- 
burton. But here Edwards's objections were even 
stronger. Though he had formerly been actually 
in communication with Pope, and admired him as 
a poet, he did not care for him as an individual. 
If, as he argued, he was to take off the patches 
with which Warburton had tinkered the Essay on 
Man, matters would not therefore be mended. 
Then again (an unsurmountable reason !), War- 
burton had Pope's papers. In all this, it is probable 
that lack of authorities and opportunity had more 
influence than lack of ability. Editing was ' a work % 
to use Edwards's own words, ' not to be done with 
a wet finger.' And it is obvious from his later letters 
that his health was steadily failing. He died, aged 
fifty-eight, after a short illness, on January 3, 1757, 
when visiting Richardson at Parson's Green ; and 
he was buried in Ellesborough churchyard under 
a lengthy epitaph by his nephews and heirs. One 
of his last sonnets was addressed to the sexton 
of the parish, whom he adjured to guard his 
c monumental hillock ' from ' trampling cattle ' — an 
illustration of the days when God's acre was used 
as a grazing 1 ground. Edwards was a worthy, 
amiable, well-educated gentleman, with an inborn 
love of books. His literary record is not large, or 
lasting. But it is something to have smitten the 
Goliath of pedantry with the pebble of common 
sense : something, also, to have made a sustained 
attempt to revive the sonnet of Milton under the 
sovereignty of Pope. 

1 Cp. Gay's Shepherd's Week, 1714, p. 49. 



AN 18TH-CENTURY HIPPOCRATES 

In Plutarch's life of Numa Pompilius, the rule 
and order of the Vestal Virgins are thus concisely 
defined : ' In the first ten years they learn what 
they have to do : the next ten years following, they 
do that which they have learned : and the last ten 
years, they teach young novices. 5 x With a para- 
phrase of this passage, William Heberden, M.D., 
here selected as the example of the eighteenth- 
century ' beloved physician ' (in the nineteenth that 
title was popularly assigned to Dr. John Brown of 
Edinburgh), opens the Preface to his Commentaries 
on the History and Cure of Diseases. ' This is no 
bad model [he says] for the life of a physician ' ; 
and when in 1782, he had passed through the first 
and second of the stages above indicated, he sat 
down, as the Greek motto on his title-page pro- 
claims, to digest and co-ordinate the methodical 
bedside notes of his forty years' practice. The 
matter of his book is naturally beyond the province 
of this paper. It is not of the supreme contem- 
porary authority on angina pectoris, or of the learned 
analyst of that ' mithridate ' 2 which has passed 
into English poetry as a synonym for ' antidote ', 
that it is proposed to speak. Rather is it of the 
accomplished Fellow of his college who was scholar 
enough to contribute to the Athenian Letters — 
whose associates were as diverse as Gray and Jacob 
Bryant, Kennicott, and Conyers Middleton — and 

1 North's Plutarch, Rouse's ed., 1898, i. 245. 

2 Drayton calls garlic ' the poor man's mithridate '. The 
word is also used by Donne, Lyly, and Ben Jonson. 



26 LATER ESSAYS 

who numbered among his patients not only Richard- 
son and Thomas Edwards of the Canons of Criticism, 
but Cowper and Johnson, and Mrs. Delany and 
George III. That he should have deserved and 
obtained the esteem and affection of all these is 
assuredly reason enough for raising to his memory 
a modest cairn of commendation. 

He was seventy-two when he signed the Preface 
to his Commentaries, having been born in London 
in August 1710. His father, Richard Heberden, 
came of a good Hampshire family, but his profession 
is unknown. He died in October 1717, leaving his 
family i in somewhat straitened circumstances \ 
A few months before, his son had been admitted 
into the Grammar School of St. Saviour's, South- 
wark, of which in after life he became a benefactor. 
Here he succeeded so well that he was sent, in his 
fifteenth year, to St. John's, Cambridge, later the 
college of Mason, as it had formerly been that of 
Prior. This was in 1724. Four years subsequently, 
he graduated B.A., proceeding Fellow in 1730. 
Thereupon he entered on what was to be the first 
period of his future calling, and studied medicine 
assiduously at London and Cambridge. In 1739 
he became an M.D. and practised for some years 
at the University. But he did not, on this 
account, relax his interest in the affairs of his 
Alma Mater, nor neglect the reputation he had 
acquired as a Hebraist and classical scholar. Thus 
it comes about that he figures as a contributor to 
the at first privately-printed Athenian Letters of 
1741-3. 

' Writ large ' in a liberal sub-title, these letters 
purport to be the Epistolary Correspondence of an 
Agent of the King of Persia residing at Athens 
during the Peloponnesian War, translated from a 



AN 18TH-CENTURY HIPPOCRATES 27 

manuscript in the Old Persic language preserved in 
the library at Fez. They were, as a matter of fact, 
mainly the work of a group of clever young Cam- 
bridge men (most of whom rose in the future to 
positions of eminence), who composed them 6 as 
a preparatory trial of their strength and as the best 
method of imprinting on their own minds some of 
the immediate subjects of their academical studies \ 
In this aspiration they were said to have been 
encouraged by the Reverend and indefatigable 
Thomas Birch of the General Dictionary (then con- 
cluding or just concluded), who was one of the 
contributors. As Birch's lifelong patron was the 
first Earl of Hardwicke, and Hardwicke's sons, 
Philip, afterwards second Lord Hardwicke, and his 
brilliant brother Charles, were the leading writers, 
this may well have been the case. In its first form 
(four volumes, octavo) the issue of the book was 
exceptionally ' limited ', only twelve copies being 
struck off at the expense of the authors ' under the 
strictest injunctions of secrecy \ 1 

1 So long a period elapsed before the Athenian Letters 
emerged from their semi-suppressed condition, that it will 
be best to follow their further fortunes in a foot-note. In 
1781, when Charles Yorke was dead, his brother Philip, then 
second Earl, issued, in one quarto volume, another privately- 
printed edition of one hundred copies, with the result that 
the book, having become known, began to be sought after. 
This led to the publication of an edition in two vols, octavo, 
a copy of which was sent in 1789 by the Lord Dover of the 
day to the venerable Abbe Barthelemy, author of the 
Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grece, 1788. Barthelemy 
was lavish in compliment ; and was polite enough to add 
that, had he known earlier of the book, he should either 
have refrained from writing his own, or endeavoured to 
improve it by so excellent a model. In 1798 appeared an 
authoritative edition, duly equipped with portraits, map, 
geographical index, and ' Advertisement ' by the third Earl 
of Hardwicke ; and the book, by this time, in the opinion of 



28 LATER ESSAYS 

Heberden's contribution to this now-forgotten 
work was, of course, professional. It is contained 
in Letter CXXXVI, vol. ii, from Cleander, the 
Persian agent of the fable, to Alexias, the chief 
physician of Artaxerxes, and consists of what would 
to-day be called an ' appreciation ' of Hippocrates 
of Cos as he 4 struck a contemporary '. Excellent 
as it is, it does not lend itself easily to quotation, 
unless one excepts the cynical characterization, by 
a ' certain Athenian ', of 4 gymnastick physick ' as 
4 the art of preserving their lives who ought not to 
live, and continuing valetudinarians a burden to 
themselves and society ' — an utterance which, if it 
were ever grateful to a Greek, would certainly not 
be acceptable to our latter-day disciples of Sandow. 
Cleander dwells on the depressed state of medicine 
before Hippocrates, when it appears to have been 
wholly in the hands of nostrum-mongers and quack- 
salvers ; on the pertinacity with which Hippocrates 
insisted on studying the stages of disease at the 
patient's bedside, so as to earn for himself the 
reputation of a 4 clinic ' physician ; on his deter- 
mined endeavour to dissociate medicine from the 
dubious philosophy to which it had become affiliated; 
and, finally and chiefly, on the method and lucidity 
which justly entitle him to the credit of being the 
first to collect ' the scattered precepts of physick ' 
into an art, and to 4 deliver them like a man of this 
world '. 1 Some of Cleander's utterances read 

the Monthly Review, constituted the best commentary on 
Thucydides then extant. 

1 Charles Fox, who read his Hippocrates, highly approved 
one of the famous Aphorisms. It was, as quoted by Rogers : 
' The second-best remedy is better than the best, if the 
patient likes it best ' (Table-Talk, 1856, p. 94). But, in the 
quotation books, he is known mainly by the rightly-famous 
' Life is short, art long '. He did not, however, confirm his 
initial axiom, for he lived to be 104. 



AN 18TH-CENTURY HIPPOCRATES 29 

strangely to the uninstructed modern. It is diffi- 
cult to realize that t it is doubtful whether Hippo- 
crates ever saw a human body dissected ', and that 
the illustrious Father of Medicine knew no more of 
anatomy than could be learned from sacrificed 
animals or Egyptian mummies. There are in 
Cleander's communication, among other passages, 
some which are probably no more than the echo of 
what Johnson calls ' the unauthorized loquacity of 
common fame ' ; but in any case Heberden's con- 
tribution must have been a welcome and authori- 
tative addition to the Athenian Letters. 

Beyond a few notes supplied in 1744 to Zachary 
Grey's Hudibras, in the subscription list of which 
Heberden duly appears, with several of his Cam- 
bridge colleagues, no other of his purely literary 
efforts seems to have survived, though as a Hebraist 
he gave acknowledged aid to Bishop Newcome in 
his book on The Twelve Minor Prophets. During 
the period of his residence at Cambridge as a practis- 
ing physician he delivered a course of lectures on 
materia medica. These had many auditors who 
became distinguished, notably Sir George Baker, 
later physician to Queen Charlotte, and are remark- 
able by their wealth of classical quotation and 
illustration. ' Homer, Plautus, Plutarch, Vitruvius, 
Virgil, Horace, Lucretius, Cicero, Ovid, Persius, 
Lucan, Catullus, Juvenal, and Pliny [says Dr. 
Pettigrew] are all made to illustrate and adorn his 
discourses.' They have never been printed, although 
they were, or are, still existent in manuscript form ; 
but a solitary example of them is supposed to exist 
in the tract entitled Antitheriaka, published in 1745. 
And here it will be safest to invoke the aid of a pro- 
fessional pen : ' Treating of this famous medicine 
[Mithridatium] which had not yet been expunged 



30 LATER ESSAYS 

from our public dispensatory, Dr. Heberden proves 
that the only poisons known to the ancients were 
hemlock, monk's hood, and those of venomous 
beasts ; and that to these few they knew of no 
antidotes. That the farrago called after the cele- 
brated King of Pontus [Mithridates Eupator], 
which, in the time of Celsus, consisted of thirty- 
eight simples, had changed its composition every 
hundred years, and that therefore what had been 
for so many ages called Mithridatium was quite 
different from the true medicine found in the cabinet 
of that prince. This, he states, was a very trivial 
one, composed of twenty leaves of rue, one grain of 
salt, two nuts, and two dried figs ; and he infers 
that, even supposing Mithridates had ever used the 
compound (which is doubtful), his not being able to 
dispatch himself was less owing to the strength 
of his antidote than to the weakness of his poison.' * 

These last lines might be more explicit. In either 
case, the dictionaries agree that Mithridates killed 
himself to avoid falling into the hands of the 
Romans. 2 

When, in 1745, Antitheriaka was published, Heber- 
den was five-and-thirty, and his Cambridge reputa- 
tion had begun to extend to the metropolis. In 
the same year he was admitted as a candidate to 
the College of Physicians, then in Warwick Lane, 
Newgate Street ; and in 1746 he became a Fellow. 
About 1748, on the invitation of George the Second's 
Physician-in-Ordinary, Sir Edward Hulse, he moved 

1 Macmichael's The Gold-headed Cane, Munk's ed., 1884, 
pp. 99-100. 

2 Heberden (according to Macmichael) discredited the 
stories of poisons that could be concealed in seals and the like. 
But, in Heberden's own day, Condorcet died in the prison of 
Bourg-la-Reine from a poison that he carried in the bezel 
of his ring. 



AN 18TH-CENTURY HIPPOCRATES 31 

to London, taking up his abode in Cecil Street, 
Strand. (Whether this was a favoured haunt of the 
faculty we know not ; but it was to Hayley's friend, 
Dr. William Austin, ' of Cecil Street, London ', that 
Cowper addressed a sonnet in May 1792, thanking 
him for his advice in Mrs. Unwin's second paralytic 
seizure.) Henceforth Heberden rapidly progressed 
in popularity. In 1752 he gave up his St. John's 
fellowship and married Miss Elizabeth Martin, 
daughter of John Martin, M.P. for Tewkesbury. 
Two years later she died ; and in 1761 he married 
again, the lady being Miss Wollaston, of Charter- 
house Square. By his first wife he had a son, who 
became Canon of Exeter ; by his second, several 
children, only two of whom survived, one being the 
Mary Heberden who figures in Fanny Burney's 
Diary for 1787 ; the other, his son and biographer 
William. Meanwhile distinctions came to him freely 
from Warwick Lane and elsewhere. When, in 
1761, Queen Charlotte arrived from Mecklenburg, 
George III offered him the post of Physician to 
Her Majesty. This offer he thought fit to decline, 
on the ground that ' it might interfere with those 
connexions of life which he had now formed ', 
among which, it is only reasonable to suppose, his 
second marriage played its part. But it is a signifi- 
cant proof of his personal influence that, notwith- 
standing this refusal, he was successful in obtaining 
the appointment for a nominee of his own, a little- 
known but extremely competent Dr. Joseph Lether- 
land. It is not, however, necessary to record all 
the milestones of a uniformly prosperous career. 
Soon after his arrival in London he had been 
strongly impressed by the signs of impaired power 
in his celebrated contemporary, Dr. Mead ; and 
he had resolved in his own case not to disregard 



32 LATER ESSAYS 

the timely warnings of advancing years. For this 
reason, in 1783, he deemed it prudent (in his son's 
words) ' to withdraw a little from the fatigues of 
his profession. He therefore purchased a house at 
Windsor, to which he used ever afterwards to retire 
during some of the summer months ; but returned 
to London in the winter, and still continued to visit 
the sick for many years.' * When he ceased to 
reside in Cecil Street is not apparent ; but his last 
London house was on the south side (Captain 
Morris's 4 sweet, shady side ') of Pall Mall, looking, 
at the back, on the Mall and St. James's Park. 
According to Granger, Heberden himself built, or 
rebuilt, this on a freehold site given by Charles II 
to Nell Gwyn, the last owners of which had been 
the Waldegrave family, from whom it was pur- 
chased. 2 Of Heberden's closing years there is little 
to say. In 1796, when he was eighty-seven, he 
fractured his thigh when attending service at the 
Chapel Royal, St. James's — an accident which 
disabled him from active exercise to the end of his 
life, and prompted in a contemporary the apposite 
quotation from Virgil : 

Nee te tua plurima, Panthu, 
labentem pietas, nee Apollinis infula texit? 

On May 17, 1801, being then in his ninety-first 
year, he died in his Pall Mall house, and was buried 
in Windsor Parish Church, where there is a monu- 
ment to his memory. His portrait by Sir William 
Beechey, R.A., hangs in the Censor's Room of the 
Royal College of Physicians. 

1 Memoir prefixed to the translated Commentaries of 1806, 
p. iv. 

2 There is a print of the house in the Crace Collection at 
the British Museum (Hill's Johnson's Letters, 1892, ii. 302 n.). 

3 Aeneidii. 429-30. 



AN 18TH-CENTURY HIPPOCRATES 33 

Dr. Heberden's Commentaries on the History and 
Cure of Diseases (Commentarii de Morborum Historia 
et Curatione), though drawn up as early as 1782, 
were not published until 1802, a year after his 
death. They were originally written in Latin and 
translated by the author's distinguished son, Dr. 
William Heberden the younger. Examination of 
them here would be out of place as well as perilous 
to a layman ; and upon this theme we shall content 
ourselves by quoting Sir Norman Moore. There 
can be no higher authority. Dr. William Heberden, 
he says, ' is rightly considered one of the greatest 
of English physicians. His Commentaries on the 
History and Cure of Diseases is a book which can 
never become obsolete or cease to be worth reading 
by a student of medicine, so absolutely is it based 
on an exact personal observation of disease.' x 

With this we pass to such dispersed particulars 
of Heberden's relations with his contemporaries as 
we have been able to bring together. The facts 
of his career, it will be gathered, are not such as 
furnish material for eventful history. But of few 
men can it be more literally advanced that he was 
; known by his friends '. From the date of his 
establishment in Cecil Street to the end of his days 
he must have been one of the most popular and 
best respected members of his profession, though it 
is not from himself that we learn it. Among his 
patients he numbered many of the leading celebrities, 
with most of whom he was also on terms of intimacy. 
And not a few of the literati of his day were attracted 

1 A Lecture on the Principles and Practice of Medicine, 
delivered October 3, 1899, by Norman Moore, M.D., p. 2. 
The Commentaries are examined in some detail by the late 
A. C. Buller, B.A., Cambridge, whose interesting Essay on 
the Life and Works of Heberden obtained the Wix Prize at 
St. Bartholomew's Hospital in 1878. 

D 



34 LATER ESSAYS 

to him by his attainments as a scholar and man of 
science. One of the earliest of this group must 
have been that inveterate anti-Bentleyite Conyers 
Middleton, though he was not, perhaps, to be 
reckoned among his close associates. But Middle- 
ton's History of the Life of Cicero, the much- vaunted 
work which was said to owe its matter to William 
Bellenden and its manner to John, Lord Hervey, 
belongs to 1741, the year of the Athenian Letters ; 
and the farm which the profits enabled Middleton 
to purchase at Hildersham, on the Granta, where 
for the rest of his life he chiefly lived, was only 
six miles from Cambridge. He must have been for 
some time under Heberden's care when, not long 
before his death in 1750, he came to London to 
seek further advice, since he told the specialist he 
consulted that ' his case being out of the power of 
physick ' he had long taken Dr. Heberden's medicines 
without effect. 1 Heberden subsequently printed 
from an Harleian manuscript in the British Museum 
an unpublished Appendix to an earlier work which 
Middleton had issued in 1726, on ' the servile and 
ignoble condition ' of the medical profession among 
the Romans, adding thereto an account of the 
circumstances which led to its long-deferred publica- 
tion. He was, however, by no means prepared to 
act as foster-father to all Middleton's posthumous 
productions, for when Middleton's widow (and 
third wife) brought him an unpublished treatise on 
the inefficacy of prayer, which her versatile but 
unorthodox husband had left behind him, Heberden, 
after reading it carefully, told her frankly that 
though it might do credit to his learning, it Could 
do none to his principles or memory. It is, never- 
theless, characteristic of the benevolence attributed 
1 Climenson's Elizabeth Montagu, 1906, i. 276. 



AN 18TH-CENTURY HIPPOCRATES 35 

to him that, having ascertained from a publisher 
that the market value of the copyright of such 
a piece would be £150, he paid Mrs. Middleton £200 
and burned the manuscript. 1 

One of the critics who contested the authenticity 
of the letters of Cicero and Brutus which Middleton 
had published was the distinguished Greek scholar 
Jeremiah Markland, whom Heberden knew well 
and must often have visited at Milton Court, the 
spacious old Elizabethan farm-house near Dorking 
where, as Mrs. Rose's lodger, Markland spent the 
last twenty-four years of his secluded and studious 
life, and to which, after his death, another great 
Grecian, Richard Porson, made reverential pil- 
grimage in his honour. Heberden it was who paid 
for the publication of Markland 's editions of the 
Supplices (1763) and the two Iphigenias (1771) of 
Euripides ; and it was Heberden who wrote the 
inscription for the votive brass which stands (or 
stood, since the church has been twice rebuilt) to 
Markland's memory in the chancel of St. Martin, 
Dorking. To Heberden, Markland left all his books, 
which were enriched by his valuable notes. His 
tomb, with that of Abraham Tucker of Betchworth 
Castle, author (as 4 Edward Search ') of The Light 
of Nature Pursued, is in the now disused churchyard. 

Markland was not the only scholar of eminence 
who belonged to Heberden 's circle of friends. There 
is good evidence that he was well acquainted with 
Thomas Tyrwhitt, the accomplished editor of 
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, who, before finally 
devoting himself to literature, had contrived to be 

1 This story is told in different ways. The version here 
followed is that of Dr. Macmichael in The Gold-headed Cane, 
Munk's ed., 1884, pp. 108-9, and was probably derived from 
Dr. Heberden's son. 

D 2 



36 LATER ESSAYS 

a competent Under-Secretary at War and an 
efficient Clerk to the House of Commons, earning 
distinction in both capacities. Tyrwhitt was not 
only ' a master of almost every European tongue ', 
but he was regarded by Porson as ' an admirable 
critic V and Lord Charlemont (no mean judge) 
considered that his pamphlet on the Chatterton 
question was ' the most candid, accurate and satis- 
factory controversial tract ' that he had ever 
perused. 2 Like Twining, Tyrwhitt translated Arts- 
toilers Poetics, and his version, published in 1794, 
after his death, is specially praised by a modern 
critic for its ' penetrating scholarship '„ 3 His rela- 
tions with Heberden are evidenced by the verses 
he wrote for an olive-wood tea-caddy, which 
6 Athenian ' Stuart, another friend, had brought 
to Heberden from Greece. Tyrwhitt was dining 
with Heberden shortly after it arrived, and he sent 
his host next day the following sextet : 

In Attic fields, by famed Ilissus' flood, 
The sacred tree of Pallas once I stood. 
Now torn from thence, with graceful emblems 

drest, 
For Mira's tea I form a polished chest. 
Athens, farewell ! no longer I repine 
For my Socratic shade and patroness divine. 

Jacob Bryant, the mythologist, turned the lines 
into Latin, Sir William Jones into Greek — facts 
which supply us with the names of two more of 
Heberden's learned friends. 

Of Jacob Bryant, of whom it was jestingly said 
that he knew everything down to the Deluge and 

1 Porsoniana, in Rogers's Table-Talk, 1856, p. 322. 

2 Charlemont Corr., 1891, i. 422. It was entitled A Vindi- 
cation of the Appendix to the Poems called Rowley's, 1782. 

3 Prickard, Aristotle on the Art of Poetry, 1891, vi. 



AN 18TH-CENTURY HIPPOCRATES 37 

no farther, who believed in Chatterton but dis- 
believed in Troy, and whose Analysis of Ancient 
Mythology is supposed to have foreshadowed Mr. 
Casaubon's arid and unachieved magnum, opus in 
George Eliot's Middlemarch, 1 one might reasonably 
expect interesting particulars. As Bryant lived at 
Cippenham, about three miles from Windsor, he 
must often have met Heberden when in residence 
there, though of their actual intercourse Fanny 
Burney's Diary reveals nothing but a meeting on 
the Terrace. Nor is there more of 4 Oriental Jones ', 
or some others whom Dr. Macmichael classes as 
Heberden's associates. He speaks of those typical 
eighteenth-century prelates, Lowth and Hurd ; of 
Jortin and the Hebraist Kennicott ; of Cavendish 
(the chemist ?) and the tardily-orthodox Soame 
Jenyns ; but restricts himself to the barren enumera- 
tion of their names, so that one must fall back on 
those who were primarily patients. In the preceding 
paper we have spoken of Thomas Edwards of the 
Canons of Criticism and Richardson as coming 
in this category. 2 Heberden certainly attended 
Edwards, who in his declining years addressed to 
him a sonnet in which, after thanking him for his 
4 healing arts ' and referring to his ' wealth un- 
envied ', adjures him (doubtless with an eye to 
a vindictive Warburton in the background !) to 

Cherish his memory, and protect his fame, 
Whom thy true worth has made thy faithful friend ; 

and he certainly ministered to the author of Sir 
Charles Grandison in those obscure nervous dis- 
orders to which excessive sensibility and devotion 
to business had reduced that exemplary man. ' I 

1 He is actually mentioned in chap. xxii. 

2 See ante, p. 19. 



38 LATER ESSAYS 

must have done ', writes Edwards to his friend in 
January 1750, or ' good Mr. Heberden will chide 
me for teasing you with long letters '. As if long 
letters could have any terrors for Samuel Richardson ! 
But perhaps he disliked them — in other people. 

One of Heberden's London patients was Cowper 
who consulted him in 1763, previous to his terrible 
second derangement. Heberden, who was an 
ardent advocate of fresh air and change of scene 
(he had earlier sent Edwards from London to the 
Chiltern Hills), recommended Cowper to go to 
Margate, where he stayed during August and 
September, visiting thence, among other things, 
that fantastic imitation (with supplements) of 
Cicero's Formian Villa, which had been erected at 
Kingsgate three years before by Henry Fox, first 
Lord Holland, and which, three years later, prompted 
the satiric quatrains of Gray. Cowper calls it ' a 
fine piece of ruins '. The Margate treatment tem- 
porarily raised his spirits, but did no more good than 
Heberden's drugs. Eighteen years afterwards, he 
nevertheless still remembered his old doctor, and in 
his ' Retirement ' refers to him as one — 

whose skill 
Attempts no task it cannot well fulfil, 
Gives melancholy up to nature's care, 
And sends the patient into purer air. 

Whether Heberden ever prescribed for the highly- 
strung author of the Elegy Wrote in a Country 
Church Yard is not apparent from Gray's corre- 
spondence. But with another of Heberden's patients 
Gray's name is indissolubly connected. This was 
the wife of his friend Mason, that beautiful and 
amiable Mary Sherman, whose metrical epitaph may 
still be read in Bristol Cathedral, graced with the 



AN 18TH-CENTURY HIPPOCRATES 39 

familiar closing quatrain by Gray which goes so far 
to redeem her husband's preliminary lines. Her 
brief married life only lasted two years, as she died 
of consumption at eight-and-twenty, apparently in 
the very act of drinking the Bristol waters — a fact 
which must be allowed to justify the Masonic ' she 
bow'd to taste the wave '. There is a reference to 
her in one of Warburton's letters : 

' Mason called on me the other day, he is grown 
extremely fat, and his wife extremely lean, indeed in 
the last stage of a consumption. I inquired of her 
health ; he said she was something better, and that 
I suppose encouraged him to come out, but Dr. 
Balguy tells me that Heberden x says she is irre- 
trievably gone, and has touched upon it to him, 
and ought to do it to her. When the terms of such 
a sentence may impede the Doctor's endeavour to 
save, the pronouncing it, would be very indiscreet, 
but in a consumption confirmed, it is a work of 
charity, as the patient is always deluded with hopes 
to the very last breath.' 2 

In this instance, for once, one is disposed to say 
ditto to Warburton. But the question was much 
debated. Hume, in one of his letters to Strahan, 
seems to think it justifiable to deceive sick people 
' for their Good '. But Johnson's sturdy honesty 
recoiled from falsehood in any form. ' I deny [he 
said] the lawfulness of telling a lie to a sick man 
for fear of alarming him. You have no business 
with consequences ; you are to tell the truth.' 

His other reasons were not so forcible : ' Besides 

1 Heberden had known Mason since 1747, when he had 
joined with Gray in procuring Mason's election to a Fellow- 
ship at Pembroke Hall (Tovey's Gray's Letters, 1900-12, 
i. 187 n. 

2 Ibid. ii. 115 n., from Mitford. 



40 LATER ESSAYS 

[he added] you are not sure what effect your telling 
him that he is in danger may have. It may bring 
his distemper to a crisis, and that may cure him. 
Of all lying, I have the greatest abhorrence of this, 
because I believe it has been frequently practised 
on myself.' 1 

According to Walpole's Correspondence, the 
4 Heaven-born Wilkes ', as Hogarth called him, 
might have been one of Heberden's patients had he 
not declined that advantage. In April 1763 he 
had been committed to the Tower for imputing 
falsehood to George III in No. 45 of the North 
Briton ; but, as all the world knows, had been 
released in the Court of Common Pleas on pleading 
privilege of Parliament. When the House of 
Commons reassembled in November 1763 he was 
challenged by a choleric West Indian named Martin, 
whom he had libelled, and on the 16th of that 
month fought a duel with him in Hyde Park, and 
was severely wounded in the side. His medical 
attendant was Dr. Brocklesby (the ' Rock less B ' 
of the wits) ; but the House commissioned Dr. 
Heberden and Hawkins (the King's Sergeant- 
surgeon) to visit him. The ' idol of the mob ' 
refused to see them, and to ' laugh at us more ', 
writes Walpole to Lord Hertford, ' sent for two 
Scotchmen, Duncan and Middleton ', although he 
had impudently postulated, at the time of his com- 
mittal to the Tower, that he should not be placed 
in any apartment which had been previously 
tenanted by a Scot. He shortly afterwards escaped 
to France. 2 

In December 1780, when Johnson's friend, Henry 

1 Hill's BoswelVs Johnson, 1887, iv. 306. 

2 Toynbee's Walpole's Letters, vol. v ; Hunt's History of 
England, 1760-1801. 



AN 18TH-CENTURY HIPPOCRATES 41 

Thrale, had returned to Streatham with what Miss 
Burney calls ' that vile influenza \ his wife hastily 
summoned Heberden from town. As he ordered 
1 cupping ', and Miss Burney speaks of Thrale s case 
as precarious, it is probable that his ailment was but 
a premonition of that fatal seizure which took place 
in the following April, and of which his medical 
advisers had warned him if he continued to persist 
in his unrestrained indulgence in the pleasures ot 
the table. Only two days before his death Dr. 
Johnson had said to him at dinner, after witnessing 
his immoderate appetite and prodigious draughts ot 
strong beer : c Sir, after the denunciations of your 
physicians this morning, such eating is little better 
than suicide.' __ , 

As already stated, it was in 1783 that Heberden 
retired from the active practice of his profession, in 
which by this time he was almost without a rival. 
In the early part of the same year Johnson's declin- 
ing health was beginning to be a source of appre- 
hension to his friends. ' I fear his constitution is 
breaking ', wrote Hannah More. But he was still 
well enough to act as her escort at Oxford and to 
exhibit to her his old quarters at Pembroke, where, 
in honour of this dual visit of notabilities, a print 
of the great man was specially hung up in the 
Common Room, having under it, 'And is not 
Johnson ours ? himself a host '—a line from the 
lady's poem of Sensibility. Not long after his 
return from Oxford, on June 17, he had his first 
paralytic seizure. He immediately sent for his 
neighbour, Dr. Brocklesby, who lived hard by in 
Norfolk Street, and for Dr. Heberden, under whose 
joint care, aided by his own robust constitution, he 
rapidly recovered. On the 20th he had regained 
his speech sufficiently to talk of Juvenal's ninth 



42 LATER ESSAYS 

satire with Dr. Brocklesby (who, like Heberden, 
was a ' classic '), and ' to let him see that the pro- 
vince was mine ' — as he reported to Mrs. Thrale at 
Bath. On the 24th he was watering his little 
garden at Bolt Court, just as he had watered the 
laurels on 4 Dick's island ' at Streatham ; and on 
the 25th Dr. Heberden took his leave. Later in 
the year, in December, he was attacked by dropsy 
and asthma, from which, after a ten weeks' con- 
finement, he again recovered, though he described 
himself as still ' at a great distance from health '. 
His appetite, however, never failed, and this, he 
tells us, Dr. Heberden always regarded as a favour- 
able sign. He considered it, says Johnson, in what 
are assuredly his own words, as indicating that 
Nature had not in despair yielded up her power to 
the force of the disease. He was, however, seventy- 
four, and his life was not to be prolonged. Before 
the year closed his ailments returned, and his 
doctors were again in requisition. It is not neces- 
sary to repeat the oft -told story of his death. But 
it is pleasant to think that he retained his powers 
until the end ; that he was still able to discuss 
Shakespeare with Dr. Brocklesby, and ' the An- 
tients ' with Dr. Heberden, whom he characterized 
to Seward as ' ultimus Romanorum, the last of the 
learned physicians ', x although, in the matter of 
dropsical incisions, he looked upon him as ' timi- 
dorum timidissimus '. He retained his wonderful 
memory and his humour so far as to repeat, only 
a few days before he died, when he had been 
secretly trying some remedy of his own, the lines 
of Swift : 

The doctors, tender of their fame, 
Wisely on me lay all the blame : 
1 Biographiana, p. 601. 



AN 18TH-CENTURY HIPPOCRATES 43 

' We must confess, his case was nice ; 
But he would never take advice. 
Had he been ruled, for aught appears, 
He might have lived these twenty years.' 

By a codicil to his will he left to Drs. Heberden 
and Brocklesby, and his surgeon Mr. Cruikshank, 
' each a book at their election to keep as a token 
of remembrance '. Heberden and Brocklesby refused 
payment for their services. Heberden, indeed, must 
have been quixotic in this way, for he declined to 
take a fee from Eldon because he had written 
a brilliant essay at Oxford. 

Of Heberden's remaining patients of consequence, 
the chief were Mrs. Delany and George III. He 
attended the former at Windsor in 1787, when she 
had suffered, in Miss Burney's mysterious words, 
' a mental distress ', which threw her into a fever 
she rapidly recovered from. She was then eighty- 
six, and she died on April 10 in the following year. 
In July 1788 King George III showed symptoms of 
indisposition ; and the Royal Household migrated 
to the curative waters of Cheltenham. In November, 
when they had returned to Windsor, he was again 
unwell ; and Dr. Heberden was called in for con- 
sultation with the Queen's Physician, then Sir 
George Baker. There is not much in Fanny's 
Diary about Heberden's ministrations, but what 
there is deserves mention. It became a part of her 
duty to carry to Queen Charlotte, who was ill in 
the next room, periodical reports of His Majesty : 
4 I am not ill, but I am nervous [she heard him say 
to his doctors] : if you would know what is the 
matter with me, I am nervous. But I love you 
both very well ; if you would tell me truth : I love 
Dr. Heberden best, for he has not told me a lie : 



44 LATER ESSAYS 

Sir George has told me a lie — a white lie, he says, 
but I hate a white lie ! If you will tell me a lie, 
let it be a black lie ! ' x A fortnight later the Royal 
Household was transferred to Kew, and the King 
passed practically to the care of the Willises, father 
and son. 

The preceding notes — it should be admitted — 
form but a slender foundation on which to build 
a personality ; and it would, no doubt, have been 
interesting to hear from Heberden directly some- 
thing of his patients and their humours. But these 
are obviously secrets which the discreet physician 
confides to his notebook, and withholds from the 
curious. As regards Heberden himself it is, how- 
ever, amply clear, from the particulars collected, 
that he possessed many sterling qualities which 
fully justified his popularity with his contemporaries. 
He was a thoroughly worthy man, of sound principle 
and stainless integrity ; beneficent as well as 
benevolent ; conscientiously devoted to the practice 
and promotion of the calling which had made him 
rich, and also (what is more to the purpose of this 
paper) a genuine lover of books and a generous 
patron of letters. Pope was dead when he moved 
to London, or, like Mead and Cheselden, he might 
have been commemorated in a couplet 

(I'll do what Mead and Cheselden advise, 

To keep these limbs, and to preserve these eyes) ; 

or he might have prompted an ' Epistle to Dr. 
Heberden ' on the model of the famous ' Epistle to 
Dr. Arbuthnot '. Writing to Ralph Allen late in 
life, Pope is quoted as saying, with reference to the 
kind treatment he had received from the faculty, 
' They are in general the most amiable companions 

1 Bumey Diary, 1905, iv. 136. 



AN 18TH-CENTURY HIPPOCRATES 45 

and the best friends, as well as the most learned 
men I know.' x He would certainly not have denied 
these attributes to our ' eighteenth-century Hippo- 
crates '. 

1 Account of Pope in An Excursion to Windsor, &c, by 
John Evans, LL.D., 2nd ed., 1827, p. 136. 



'HERMES' HARRIS 

In May 1775, Sir Isaac Newton's old house in 
St. Martin's Street, Leicester Square, then tenanted 
by the Burney family, was the scene of one of those 
musical evenings which, after long cessation, had 
again become fashionable. The not-too-spacious 
drawing-room had been enlarged by opening the 
folding-doors into the back-room or library, where 
the harpsichords of the performers were usually 
placed, and we must imagine Dr. Burney, music- 
roll in hand as Reynolds depicts him, welcoming 
the guests who climbed the narrow oak staircase 
leading to the first floor. We must also imagine his 
daughter Fanny, from some shy coign of vantage 
in the background, taking careful note of each new- 
comer, in order to make exact report of the occasion 
to her kind old Mentor at Chessington — the ' Daddy ' 
Crisp of her Diary. The concert was begun by the 
Welsh harper, Mr. Jones, who, though in Fanny's 
opinion • a silly young man ', exhibited ' great 
neatness and delicacy ' in handling his yet unpopu- 
larized instrument. To him, on the harpsichord, 
followed ' Mr. Burney ' (i. e. Charles Rousseau 
Burney, Dr. Burney's son-in-law), playing ' with 
his usual successful velocity and his usual applause '. 
His place was taken by the Danish Ambassador's 
wife, the pretty and accomplished Baroness Deiden, 
who, having volubly protested (in French) that after 
such a master her attempts would resemble those 
of a figurante following the popular danseuse, 
Mile Heinel, consented to enthral the audience. 
(She was, as a matter of fact, one of the most 
brilliant lady harpsichord-players in Europe.) 



4 HERMES ' HARRIS 47 

Hetty Burney, Fanny's eldest sister, came next 
with a slow movement of Echard's — 4 to avoid 
emulation ' ; and she was succeeded by Miss Louisa 
Harris, a pupil of Sacchini, one of whose songs 
she sang, supplementing it with a rondeau from 
the Piramo e Tisbe of Rauzzini, Fanny's idol. The 
closing piece, however, which the diarist italicizes 
as the great Feast of the evening, was Miithel's 
duet for two harpsichords, 1 the executants being 
Hetty Burney and her husband, the ' Mr. Burney ' 
above-mentioned, who was also her cousin. ' It 
is impossible ', says the sisterly chronicler, ' for 
admiration to exceed what the company in general 
expressed. . . . Mr. Harris, and, indeed, everybody, 
appeared enchanted.' The ' Mr. Harris ' on whom 
the distinction of capitals is here conferred, was the 
father of Sacchini's ' singing scholar ', Miss Louisa 
Harris. He had, as a matter of fact, played the 
accompaniment to his daughter's song. At this 
date he was a man of sixty-five, M.P. for Christ- 
church; Hants, a former Lord of the Admiralty 
and Treasury, and, by recent appointment, Secretary 
and Comptroller of the Household to Her Majesty 
Queen Charlotte. Besides being a recognized 
authority on Art, Music, and Poetry, he was a sound 
classical scholar and a learned philologist and 
grammarian. He was generally known, from his 
chief work, as 4 Hermes ' Harris. To him — but 
perhaps more as an eighteenth-century personality 

1 This, in a later soiree, was repeated for the gratification 
of the famous Count Orloff. On learning that the players 
were husband and wife, he exclaimed to Mrs. Burney : 
4 Mais qu'a produit tant d'harmonie ? ' To which the 
blushing and flustered Hetty could only reply confusedly : 
4 Rien, Monseigneur, que trois enfants ' — an answer which 
greatly diverted the Russian man-mountain, who was 
4 addicted to pleasantry ' . 



48 LATER ESSAYS 

of the better type than as an author, and not 
omitting what he himself would have called some 
4 collateral expatiation ' into his recently established 
relations with his contemporary, Henry Fielding — 
it is designed to devote this paper. 

As regards rank and fortune, James Harris of 
Salisbury might fairly claim to meet all the super- 
ficial requirements of Defoe in his definition of the 
4 Compleat Gentleman ' of the day. From his 
father, who belonged to an old Wiltshire family, he 
inherited a competency, while his mother was the 
Lady Elizabeth Ashley, third daughter of Anthony, 
second Earl of Shaftesbury, and sister to that 
illustrious author of the Characteristics who is 
commonly credited, among other things, with the 
fortunate promoting of ' miscellaneous writing '. 
Harris's father's house at Salisbury — or, as it was 
then called, New Sarum — was an ' ancient mansion ' 
in the Cathedral Close, adjoining St. Ann's Gate. 
It had been held under the Church by the family 
since 1660, and is described as ' grafted upon and 
including part of the old ramparts . . . with a regular 
warren of rooms on many levels '. Here he was 
born, July 20, 1709. Of his youthful days no 
particulars are preserved by his devoted son and 
biographer, the first Earl of Malmesbury ; but if 
the child be father to the man, he belonged, in all 
likelihood, to that quieter type of schoolboy which 
is reckoned to be ' better at books than games '. 
He went early to the grammar school in the Close, 
where Addison, who hailed from the neighbouring 
rectory of Milston, had formerly been a pupil, and 
the master of which was the Rev. Richard Hele, 
whom Keightley, in 1858, relying on the then- 
current Salisbury tradition, regarded as the proto- 
type of Fielding's ' Parson Thwackum '. But, apart 



'HERMES' HARRIS 49 

from the fact that the author of Tom Jones specifi- 
cally disclaims personal portraiture, 1 and also refers 
his readers for the outward semblance of Thwackum 
to a personage in one of Hogarth's prints, recent 
investigations 2 have, proved conclusively that there 
is no real affinity between Thwackum and Mr. Hele, 
whose biography shows him to have been a ' man 
of the highest character, and utterly dissimilar to 
Thwackum in every respect ', while Lord Malmes- 
bury says expressly that he was long known and 
honoured in the West of England as ' an instructor 
of youth '. Neither can Fielding have seen much 
of Hele, since from 1719 to 1725 he himself was 
at Eton, under Dr. Bland. At the same time, 
Fielding was probably well acquainted with the 
Harris circle, as he generally spent his holidays 
at New Sarum with his maternal grandmother, 
Lady Gould, who lived in St. Martin's Church Street, 
between St. Mary's Home and the Church. 3 This 
acquaintance, of course, is merely conjectural ; but, 
as will be plain, there is good evidence that Harris 
and Fielding were on intimate terms in later years. 
And it is worth noting that the three Miss Cradocks, 
one of whom Fielding afterwards married, lived 
opposite the Harris mansion in the Close. 4 

In 1725, when Harris was sixteen, he left the 
Cathedral School for the University, and went to 
Wadham College, Oxford. Like his co-eval, Lyttel- 
ton, he entered as a gentleman commoner ; and, 
as in Lyttelton's case, there is no record of his 

1 Joseph Andrews, Bk. Ill, chap. i. 

2 ' Fieldingiana,' by Mr. J. Paul de Castro, Notes and 
Queries, November 1917, p. 467. 

3 Ibid., p. 468. 

4 Mary Penelope, one of the sisters, and perhaps the 
eldest, died in October 1729, at the age of twenty-four, and 
was buried in the choir of the Cathedral (ibid., p. 467). 

E 



50 LATER ESSAYS 

academic life. When he had duly matriculated, 
his father sent him to Lincoln's Inn — 6 not intending 
him \ says Lord Malmesbury, ' for the Bar, but, 
as was a common practice, meaning to make the 
study of the law a part of his education '. When 
he was twenty-four his father died — an event 
which, by rendering him independent, left him free 
to follow his own inclinations. He accordingly 
returned from London to Salisbury, taking up his 
permanent abode in the paternal house in the Close. 
His bent had always been to Greek and Latin 
literature, which he now proceeded to study 
assiduously — rising often, his biographer tells us, 
at four or five on a winter's morning in order to 
secure the requisite quiet and seclusion. This, for 
the next fourteen or fifteen years, was the main 
business of his life. But, being still well under 
middle age, he did not, on this account, in any way 
withdraw himself from social entertainments. In 
common with his father, he was passionately fond 
of music, and generally played an active part in 
the diversions of the Wiltshire capital. As might 
be anticipated from his legal training, he also 
officiated regularly as a county magistrate, earning 
in that capacity a reputation for much more than 
merely decorative efficiency. 

The outcome of his prolonged devotion to the 
study of the classics was a volume entitled Three 
Treatises — the first of them being ' A Dialogue 
concerning Art ' ; the second, ' A Discourse of Art, 
Painting, and Poetry ' ; and the third, ' A Dialogue 
concerning Happiness '. The book appeared in 
1744, and was decorated with a highly emblematical 
frontispiece by James Stuart (the subsequently 
famous ' Athenian Stuart '), in which Virtue is 
represented crowning Nature — both crowner and 



' HERMES ' HARRIS 51 

crowned being, quite needlessly, described as ' after 
the antique '. The initial dialogue, dedicated to 
the writer's relative, the Earl of Shaftesbury, 
purports to be the result of an excursion by two 
friends to Lord Pembroke's seat at Wilton, three 
miles from Salisbury, and is devoted to the discussion 
of Art in the abstract. The discourse that follows 
deals at large with its main divisions ; and the 
concluding treatise ' professes to prove that the 
Perfection and Happiness of Human Nature are 
only to be obtained through the medium of a moral 
and virtuous Life '. To give an exhaustive account 
of the whole in this place is neither essential nor 
practicable ; but it may fairly be granted that 
when (as the writer's son reports) Lord Monboddo 
commended the first Dialogue for its excellent 
' dividing or diaeretic manner ', it is difficult to 
gainsay his lordship, still less to deny the undoubted 
erudition (' bullion ' Johnson would have called 
it) of the subject-matter. But, in these hand-to- 
mouth days, it is a book more likely to be pillaged 
than perused. 

To return for a moment to Fielding. Beyond 
the love-verses to ' Celia ' (Charlotte Cradock), 
whom he had married in 1734, there is apparently 
little to connect him with Salisbury up to 1743, 
although it is clear he must often have visited that 
town after his grandmother's death. But an 
unmistakable allusion to Harris in the c Essay on 
Conversation ' shows that either in London or 
Wiltshire they must have maintained relations. 
Fielding twice expressly speaks in this paper of 
4 my Friend, the Author of an Inquiry into HajDpi- 
ness V as having sufficiently and admirably proved 
that man is a social animal ; and, in a note to the 
first mention of that ' excellent author ', adds that 

E 2 



52 LATER ESSAYS 

the treatise here indicated is not yet published, 
thus making it clear that he had read the book in 
manuscript, as the Miscellanies (which included the 
4 Essay on Conversation ') were issued in April 1743, 
And this brings us to a hitherto-doubtful point in 
Fielding's biography, which, as it is distinctly 
connected with Harris, may excusably be dealt 
with here. 

In a letter written by Fielding from Lisbon in 
1754 to his brother John, the major portion of which 
was printed in the National Review for August 1911, 
advantage was taken of the mutilated manuscrijDt 
to omit certain passages which at that time it was 
held inexpedient to publish, because, without some 
explanation not then forthcoming, they were so 
obscure as to mislead. Fielding, it may be remem- 
bered, was much annoyed by the proceedings of 
Miss Margaret Collier, who had accompanied him 
to Lisbon as companion to his wife and daughter. 
One of his utterances referred to the ' obligations 
she and her Family have to me, who had an Execu- 
tion taken out against me for 400Z. for which 
I became Bail for her Brother '. No allusion to 
this incident was to be traced in any then-available 
Fielding records, and it could neither be confuted 
nor confirmed. For this reason, pending inquiry, 
the sentence was withheld. Since then the facts 
have been fully ascertained. They may be sum- 
marized as follows : In 1745, Margaret Collier's 
brother was proceeded against at Westminster by 
one Tristram Walton for a debt of £400 which he 
could not be jDersuaded to pay. The plaintiff 
obtained special bail, and the special bails, or 
4 Pledges ', were James Harris, of the City of New 
Sarum in Wilts, and Henry Fielding, of Boswell 
Court, in the Parish of St. Clement Danes, in the 



' HERMES ' HARRIS 53 

County of Middlesex. The case was tried ; but 
Collier, who was a Doctor of Civil Law, ' demurred ', 
in order to stave off the day of reckoning, with the 
consequences to Fielding above indicated, the main 
burden of which seems to have fallen on him, 
perhaps, — it has been suggested — because the 
Sheriff thought one man in London was worth two 
in Wiltshire. 1 At all events the result gave Fielding 
good reason for writing in the Lisbon letter, that he 
hated Collier's very name. 

The Dr. Arthur Collier who figures in the above 
trial, and who is elsewhere described ' as an ingenious, 
but unsteady and eccentric man ', had long resided 
in Salisbury, where his father, the metaphysician 
and Rector of Langford Magna, died in 1732. This 
circumstance, coupled with the fact that he was 
a subscriber to Fielding's Miscellanies of 1743, 
sufficiently accounts for the presence as his ' Pledges ' 
of Fielding and also of Harris, to whom we come 
again. In 1745, being then thirty-six, Harris 

1 ' Fielding and the Collier Family,' by Mr. J. Paul de 
Castro, Notes and Queries, August 5, 1916. I must here 
frankly acknowledge my obligations to Mr. de Castro for 
the above details. The war has ruthlessly hung up his long- 
projected biography of Fielding. But as a compensation, 
the temporary set-back has only served to extend and 
invigorate his untiring researches. There are other workers 
in this unexhausted mine from whom something may be 
expected. Professor Edwin Wells, and Professor Gerard 
Jensen of Philadelphia, have been profitably employed in 
the same direction ; while beside and behind them (with all 
the resources of the Dickson gift of Fielding books to Yale 
University Library) is Professor Wilbur L. Cross, of the 
Life of Sterne (1909), who has long had a companion study of 
Fielding in contemplation. Yale, indeed, has always been 
friendly to Fielding, for the late Professor T. R. Lounsbury, 
Professor Cross's predecessor in the Chair of English, was 
one of his most fervent admirers. [Dean Cross's book has 
since appeared, Sept. 1918.] 



54 LATER ESSAYS 

married Elizabeth, the daughter and eventual 
heiress of John Clarke, of Sandford near Bridgwater 
in Somerset, by whom he had five children, three of 
whom survived him — namely, two daughters, 
Gertrude and the Louisa whose vocal talents have 
already been celebrated, and a son, James, after- 
wards the distinguished diplomatist who became 
first Earl of Malmesbury. It is to the Letters of 
Lord Malmesbury, his Family and Friends, 1870, that 
one must look henceforth for the scant particulars 
respecting his father. The first volume covers the 
period from 1745, the year of Harris's marriage, 
to 1794 ; and, as Harris died in 1780, includes the 
remainder of his life. His own letters, in this 
collection, are largely concerned with business 
matters or minor contemporary politics, and cold 
contemporary politics, except to those who are 
really sharp-set, are the coldest of collations. Those 
of his wife to her son, with his replies, being on 
diverse topics, are more interesting. Mrs. Harris 
is not a Sevigne, or even a Lady Mary ; but she 
is chatty and readable, and the young man who 
received her nouvelles a la main at Oxford or 
Madrid, at Berlin or St. Petersburg, must have 
rejoiced in the possession of so i corresponding ' 
a mother. 

After the three Treatises, and previously to the 
publication of what must be regarded as Harris's 
chief work of Hermes, 1751, there is no evidence of 
any special literary activity on his part, with the 
exception of two short dialogues contributed 
anonymously to the Familiar Letters between the 
Principal Characters in David Simple by Fielding's 
sister Sarah, a book she published in 1747, as a sequel 
to an earlier novel. These dialogues, ' Much Ado ' 
and ' Fashion ', are assigned to Harris on the 



' HERMES ' HARRIS 55 

authority of Johnson, who read them to Eanny 
Burney and Mrs. Thrale many years afterwards, 
and they are dated respectively 1744 and 1746. 
They certainly disclose ' a sportive humour ' which 
one at least of the Doctor's listeners seems to have 
thought unexpected in a ' learned grammarian '. 
On the other hand, the ' learned grammarian ' is 
formidably to the fore in Hermes, the sub-title of 
which sufficiently explains its theme. It is A Philo~ 
sophical Inquiry concerning Universal Grammar, and, 
on this ground, very properly called after Mercury. 
It is dedicated to the first Earl of Hardwicke ; and, 
like the preceding Treatises, is embellished by the 
' Attic and simple ' taste of 6 Athenian ' Stuart 
with a cryptic frontispiece. The plan and method 
of the author are extremely orderly and elaborate ; 
but to any save the forced student of a difficult 
subject he will seem to be inconveniently learned. 
As to his ultimate conclusions, opinions differ. In 
his Preface he speaks of his efforts as tentative ; 
but later scholars have not serupled to dismiss them 
less indulgently. Nevertheless his own contemporary, 
Bishop Lowth, who, being a philologist, should 
have been a competent critic, extolled him extrava- 
gantly. ' Those [he declared] who would enter 
clearly into this subject will find it fully and accurate- 
ly handled with the greatest acuteness of investiga- 
tion, perspicuity of explication and elegance of 
method in a treatise entitled Hermes by James 
Harris, Esq.' And he goes on to compare 
him with Aristotle ; 1 praise which should have 
been peculiarly grateful to Harris, who was 

1 Lowth's opinion was endorsed by Coleridge, who says 
that Hermes is written ' with the precision of Aristotle and 
the elegance of Quintilian\ (Boswell's Johnson, Globe ed., 
p. 255 n.) 



56 LATER ESSAYS 

certainly sealed of those who, as Boileau says, hold 

that 

sans Aristote 

La raison ne voit goutte, et le bon sens radote. 

In the Covent Garden Journal for March 14, 1752, 
Fielding, who had no doubt read the book, like its 
predecessor, in proof or manuscript, gives it, as 
might be expected, his Censorial benediction, ac- 
companied by a respectfully elaborate analysis. On 
the other hand, Gray sneered at it to Norton 
Nicholls as a sample of the ' shallow profound ', 
while Johnson grumbled to Boswell that the author 
did not understand his own system, and was himself 
a grammatical castaway. These contradictions 
almost justify a perplexed biographer in taking 
refuge behind the comfortable ruling that he is 
not bound to do more than set forth correctly the 
conditions in which a work of art is produced. The 
fact, however, seems to be that Hermes is a very 
scholarly and sincere production ; but inexorably 
rigid and academic. It nevertheless brought its 
author a deserved reputation for solidity of learning. 
And besides being a treasury of out-of-the-way 
quotation, it is undoubtedly a prolonged protest 
against ■ the bigoted contempt of everything not 
modern ', and a serious defence of the neglected 
wisdom of the ancients. 

Those who can refer to the not- very-accessible 
file of the Covent Garden Journal will discover, at 
no great distance from the number containing its 
friendly notice of Hermes, or on April 14 following, 
a leader entitled ' A Dialogue at Tunbridge Wells 
between a Philosopher and a Fine Lady '. This has 
a curious air of relationship to the dialogues Harris 
contributed to Sarah Fielding's sequel to David 
Simple. It is initialed ; J ' (James ?), and may well 



' HERMES ' HARRIS 57 

be Harris's return for the Journal article ; but the 
only printed effort which can be definitely assigned 
to Harris in the next ten years is a negligible 
4 Fragment of Chaucer ' in the fifth volume of 
Dodsley's Collection, 1758. The same volume, 
however, contains a batch of epigrams from Martial 
which are dedicated 'To James Harris, Esq.' in 
the following not inapt imitation of Bk. iv, Ep. 87, 
on Apollinaris : 

Wou'dst thou, by Attic taste approv'd, 

By all be read, by all be lov'd, 

To learned Harris' curious eye, 

By me ad vis 'd, dear Muse, apply. 

In him the perfect judge you'll find, 

In him the candid friend, and kind. 

If he repeats, if he approves, 

If he the laughing muscles moves, 

Thou nor the critic's sneer shal'st mind, 

Nor be to pies or trunks consign'd, 

If he condemns, away you fly, 

And mount in paper kites the sky, 

Or dead 'mongst Grub Street's records lye. 

The writer of these verses was the Rev. John 
Hoadly, Chancellor of Winchester and youngest 
son of that portly and prosperous prelate, painted 
by Hogarth, who, from 1723 to 1734, presided over 
the Episcopal palace in Sarum Close, and, with his 
family, must have been well known to the dwellers 
at St. Ann's Gate. John Hoadly is now chiefly 
remembered by the couplets he wrote to ' moralize ' 
Hogarth's Rake's Progress ; and by the epitaph, 
often erroneously attributed to his father, which 
he composed for Sarah Fielding's memorial in the 
Abbey Church at Bath. Though, as became 
a bishop's son, he was a pluralist, he had also, like 



58 LATER ESSAYS 

his brother, the author of The Suspicious Husband, 
strong dramatic instincts ; and he was of sufficient 
literary importance in 1757 to be invited to collect 
contributions for his friend Dodsley. It is evident 
also from his letter to the publisher in October of 
that year 1 that among those he sent in was the 
Chaucerian fragment of his friend Mr. Harris. 

When Harris composed the solitary dramatic 
piece referred to in the Malmesbury correspondence 
as ' a Pastoral, called Damon and Amaryllis \ 2 does 
not appear. But three letters from Garrick to the 
author in 1762 make it plain that ' Roscius ' had 
visited Harris at Salisbury, and that the main object 
of the production of the piece at Drury Lane, then 
in hot rivalry with Covent Garden, was to secure 
the debut in the metropolis of ' Master Norris ', 
a pupil of Arne and a chorister at Salisbury Cathedral, 
in whose fortunes Harris was greatly interested. 
Garrick duly brought out the pastoral on Septem- 
ber 22, 1762, in which year it was printed under 
the title of The Spring. By this date, however, 
Harris had entered public life. Hitherto he had 
lived quietly in the house in the Close, with occasional 
migration to a country-box among the Avon trout- 
streams which he possessed at Durnford Magna, 
two and a half miles from Amesbury, and to which 
he resorted for closer study and seclusion. ' His 
time ', says his son, ' was divided between the care 
of his family, in which he placed his chief happiness, 
his literary pursuits, and the society of his friends 
and neighbours. . . . The superior taste and skill 
which he possessed in music, and his extreme 
fondness for hearing it, led him to attend to its 

1 • Dodsley' s Col ection of Poetry, &c., by W. P. Courtney, 
1910, pp. 102-3. 

2 Letters of the First Earl of Malmesbury, dfcc, 1870, i, p. 85. 



' HERMES ' HARRIS 59 

cultivation in his native place with uncommon 
pains and success, insomuch that under his auspices 
. . . the Annual Musical Festival in Salisbury 
flourished beyond most institutions of the kind.' 
He often adapted selections from Italian and German 
composers to words from the Bible and Paradise 
Lost. Sometimes the settings were by himself, and 
several of these were subsequently issued in two 
volumes by Joseph Corfe, the Cathedral organist. 
Others, when Lord Malmesbury wrote, were still 
in manuscript. 

In 1761, this ordered round of days was partially 
interrupted. Ify the interest of his first cousin, 
Mr. Edward Hooper, Chairman of the Board of 
Customs, Harris was elected M.P. for Christchurch, 
Hants — a borough which Mr. Hooper had himself 
represented for many years, and which his successor 
retained for the rest of his life. 1 When Harris 
entered Parliament the Bute Ministry was drawing 
to a close ; and after the Peace of Paris, so dex- 
terously engineered by the Due de Nivernais, came 
the short-lived Government of George Grenville. 
Harris was an adherent of Grenville, under whose 
auspices he, for a brief space, became first a Lord 
of the Admiralty and then a Lord of the Treasury ; 
and with Grenville, he went out of office. During 
this period he was much in London attending 
conscientiously to his official and parliamentary 
duties. He took no great part in debates, and never 
became inoculated with the virus of party spirit. 
He still contrived, whenever he returned to Salisbury, 
to maintain his old traditions as a county magnate, 

1 ' Who is this Harris ? ' asked Charles Townshend 
(Bute's Secretary at War), when the new Member took his 
seat. 4 He has written on grammar and virtue,' was the 
reply. ' He will find neither here,' rejoined the wit. But 
this was in 1761 ! 



60 LATER ESSAYS 

and continued his preparations for a new, but 
uncompleted, philosophical work on the Logic of 
his favourite Aristotle. It has been said that his 
own contributions to the Malmesbury Correspondence 
are few and far between. On the other hand, the 
series is greatly enlivened by the epistles of his wife 
to her son, which begin in 1763, not long after 
Grenville had taken office. James Harris the 
younger, having spent three years at school in the 
Close, had passed to Winchester, and thence at 
seventeen to Merton College, where he idled away 
his time as a gentleman commoner in the hazardous 
companionship of Charles Fox. On June 13 his 
mother writes her first letter to him, and the 
correspondence, with some intermissions, continued 
until October 1780, a short time before her death. 
To give any adequate account of this prolonged 
and exceptional sequence of letters would be 
difficult, and at this date they are sadly in want of 
annotation. According to the editor, the political 
details are unusually trustworthy. But the political 
history of the time has been written by the Greens 
and Gairdners ; what is not written by them is 
the picturesque story of its social and domestic 
life. This Mrs. Harris, in so far as it comes within 
her sphere of observation, relates effectively. 

Her note, as will be seen, is struck from the outset. 
One of the earliest letters is dated from Pall Mall, 
and describes ' a most agreeable expedition on the 
Thames '. The party go in a common wherry from 
Whitehall to Pepper Alley stairs by London Bridge, 
where they re-embark in the Admiralty barge — 
1 a commodious and highly finished thing ' — for 
Greenwich. Here they visit the College, and all to 
be seen there, ' which is St. George's Hall, the Chapel 
and the Royal Charles ward '. Thence they go on 



1 HERMES ' HARRIS 61 

to Woolwich, where they are shown the ' gun- 
warren ', the laboratory, and the models of ships. 
After this they dine at Greenwich on the smallest 
fish they ever saw, called whitebait, in a ' charming 
place in the open air which commanded a fine view 
of the Thames '. But there are drawbacks to these 
delights. The Admiralty barge cannot shoot the 
bridge at low water, and they eventually have to 
land and trudge home through the Borough. 

A later letter is divided between the great storm 
of 1763 (when, according to the Annual Register, 
there were hailstones ten inches in circumference (?)) 
and a visit to the Queen's Palace to inquire after 
the newly arrived Duke of York and Bishop of 
Osnaburg, 1 where there is cake and caudle for the 
callers, and Lady Weymouth (the Duchess of 
Portland's daughter) and the Duchess of Ancaster 
sit ' knotting ' with ' a knotting-bag hanging on 
their left arm '. Then Mrs. Harris takes Gertrude 
and Louisa to see Arthur Murphy's farce of The 
Upholsterer at Covent Garden, where also Garrick's 
young rival, Powell (in Garrick's absence on the 
Continent), is making hay by mimicking the great 
man's manner and mannerisms. Powell is playing 
Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster with Mrs. Yates, 
always a favourite with the Salisbury coterie. In 
another letter they are watching the Lord Mayor's 
Show, as well as they are able, from their Whitehall 
windows, and they also see the baby Princes held 
up to public view when King George goes in his 
new coach to open Parliament. Then comes the 

1 This episcopal dignity came to Frederick Augustus in 
his helpless cradle, and prompted the following anecdote in 
a subsequent letter. At the oratorio of Nabal, the Princess 
Dowager asked Lord Tyrawly for the story. His Lordship, 
not being strong in Biblical study, suggested that she should 
consult the Bishop of Osnaburg ! 



62 LATER ESSAYS 

revival in November of the North Briton scandal 
and the duel of Wilkes and Martin in Hyde Park. 
This is succeeded by what must have been a further 
apparition in the House of Commons of Pitt, ' on 
his crutches with his legs swathed in flannel, but 
whether 'tis gout or only to move compassion I will 
not pretend to say'. These are but the random 
pickings of the half-year ended December 1763, 
and it may be guessed how rich are the seventeen 
years that follow. 

In 1765 the Grenville Government went out, and 
at the end of the summer term Mrs. Harris's son 
leaves Merton and in September goes to Leyden, 
where Wilkes and Charles Townshend — to say 
nothing of Fielding and Goldsmith — had been before 
him. He attends the lectiones of Pest el and Run- 
kenius respectively — the latter on universal history, 
the former on Grotius's De Jure Belli et Pacis. 
The language of Runkenius is ' rather low, and filled 
with German idioms ' (the young man reports) ; 
but he is far more interesting than Pestel. At 
Leyden he makes considerable progress in Dutch, 
and is daily improving in French. He stays a year 
at Leyden and subsequently travels on the Continent 
until, in 1768, he is appointed by Lord Shelburne, 
Secretary of Embassy at Madrid, thus beginning 
his brilliant diplomatic career. While he is at Madrid 
his mother's letters are resumed. The ' Wilkes 
and Liberty ' Riots, and the free fight (of both 
sexes) over the election of a Master of the Cere- 
monies at Bath vice Derrick deceased, are salient 
topics ; but the only occurrence which concerns 
the elder Harris in particular is the private produc- 
tion in the chapel-room at Salisbury of ' a Pastorale 
and a Play \ The pastorale is clearly The Spring 
of 1762, and the play, which Mrs. Harris omits 



' HERMES ' HARRIS 63 

to name, must have been that marmoreal Creusa, 
Queen of Athens, which Laureate Whitehead had 
based on the Ion of Euripides, and brought out at 
Drury Lane in 1754. The Queen (Mrs. Pritchard's 
original part) was a local notability, Miss Wyndham 
— as fine as silver trimmings and diamonds could 
make her. Miss Gertrude Harris was the priestess of 
the piece, in a costume taken from the antique under 
the superintendence of Pope's editor, Dr. Joseph 
Warton, then Head Master of Winchester. It was 
4 not designed by either milliners or mantua-makers ' 
but ' quite simple and elegant, only fastened by 
a row of large pearls round the waist '. On her 
head she wore ' a kind of white veil, and round it 
a wreath of Alexandrian laurel '. This, in an 
anachronistic age which decorated its theatrical 
Catos with Ramillies wigs and clothed its Lears in 
flowered dressing-gowns, was certainly a move in 
that right direction to be later inaugurated at 
Drury Lane by Philip de Loutherbourg. Miss Louisa 
Harris took the part of Thyrsus (Ilyssus ?) ; but 
we are expressly told that all the i lady gentlemen ' 
(for there were apparently no male performers) 
acted in ' Eastern dresses with long robes '. The 
scenes, ' a Temple of Delphi ' and ' a laurel Grove ', 
were painted in part by Gertrude Harris, which 
discloses a fresh accomplishment in this gifted 
family. How the whole eventually went off is, 
however, not related, for they were only rehearsing 
when Mrs. Harris wrote ; but we learn incidentally 
that the stage was nearly three feet high, and that 
there was room for between forty and fifty spectators, 
as well as space for the orchestra (led by Dr. Stevens) 
required for the pastorale, in which Gertrude sang 
a song ' very sweetly and in tune ', her mother 
thought, though Louisa (who was a pupil of 



64 LATER ESSAYS 

Sacchini !) likened her sister's efforts to those of 
a piping bullfinch. 

This was all in 1770 ; and for the next ten years 
the chronicle continues to be what, for our purpose, 
can only be regarded as irrelevant chit-chat. There 
is plenty of gossip about Ranelagh and the Pantheon ; 
about Bach's concerts and Handel's oratorios ; 
about further theatricals at Salisbury, at Winterslow 
(Lord Holland's)., 1 and at Wilton (Lord Pembroke's) ; 
about the Perreau and Kingston trials, and — it 
must be admitted — about a good deal more that 
Mr. Charles Yellowplush might justly denominate 
fc fash'nable nollidge '. But the record is barren in 
direct biographical details. The chief of those 
given are the election of the younger Harris as 
Member for Christchurch, where he became his 
father's colleague ; and his transfer from Madrid 
in February 1772 as Envoy Extraordinary and 
Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Berlin. 
In 1774 Mr. Harris, senior, was appointed Comp- 
troller and Secretary to Queen Charlotte. It was 
a place, says his wife, more of honour than of 
profit. Nevertheless, it was an appointment he 
greatly valued. It was conferred on him with much 
flourish of compliment, and he retained it until 
the end of his life. Walpole refers to it as follows : 
4 Old Hermes of Salisbury, father of Harris at 
Berlin, is made Her Majesty's Secretary a la 
Guildford ' 2 — words which imply some obscure 
reservation. Another occurrence belonging to this 
period is the publication of Harris's third work, 
Philosophical Arrangements, to which reference has 
already been made. As this performance comes 

1 Winterslow House was burned down in 1774 after one 
of these performances. 

2 Toynbee's Walpole's Letters, 1904, viii. 406, 409. 



' HERMES ' HARRIS 65 

distinctly within the category of those achievements 
which its author himself describes as ' abstruse ', 
and which Byron would assuredly have classified 
as ' craggy V it will be sufficient to copy here 
Lord Malmesbury's brief account of it : ' It contains 
... a part only of a larger work that he [the author] 
had meditated, but did not finish, upon the Peri- 
patetic Logic. So far as relates to the Arrangement 
of Ideas, it is complete ; but it has other objects 
also in view. It combats with great force and ability 
the atheistical doctrines of Chance and Materialism — 
doctrines which have been lately [1801] revived in 
France, under the specious garb of modern philo- 
sophy, and issuing from thence have overspread 
a great part of Europe ; destroying the happiness 
of mankind by subverting, in every part of their 
progress, the foundations of morality and religion.' 
This w/^ra-Aristotelian work appeared in 1775, 
when Harris had passed his grand climacteric. 
During the last few years of his life he was engaged 
on a fourth book which, although printed under 
his superintendence, was not published until after 
his death. It is, no less, the most attractive of his 
productions both in style and subject ; and it is 
possible to study it without being endowed with 
any inordinate appetite for the profound. It is in 
fact a retrospective notebook of his previous philo- 
logical studies, aiming at conclusions rather than 
arguments, and illustrations rather than demonstra- 
tions. It was also, like Tom Jones, in some sort 
designed as a monument of the author's affection 
towards many of his intimate friends. Lowth's 
' admirable tract ' on the grammar of the English 
language is naturally commended ; there is a care- 
fully-phrased eulogium of Garrick's acting ; Lillo's 
1 Oddly enough Harris himself uses this very word, 

F 



66 LATER ESSAYS 

Fatal Curiosity is approvingly analysed ; Fielding's 
parti-coloured experiences of life are turned to 
the advantage of his masterpieces ; * while Lyttel- 
ton's history and Mrs. Montagu's criticism have 
each their word of recognition. Both the Wartons 
are duly honoured, as are Tyrwhitt and Upton, nor 
are Reynolds and ' Athenian ' Stuart forgotten, 
and there are quotations from the Scribleriad of 
Richard Owen Cambridge. But in addition to all 
this, the book is a fertile browsing-ground for the 
philologist at grass. Even Johnson (who was not 
kind to the author) must have been gratified to 
find his Dictionary adequately appraised by a com- 
petent judge ; and we know from Tom Tyers 
that, while the great man owned he ' had hardly 
ever read a book through ', ' the posthumous 
volumes of Mr. Harris of Salisbury (which treated 
of subjects which were connected with his own 
professional studies) had attractions which engaged 
him to the end '. The 4 posthumous volumes ' were 
the Philological Inquiries of 1781. 2 

Notwithstanding all this, the recorded particulars 
of Harris's intercourse with the above notabilities 
are neither very definite nor very plentiful. Present 
in many places, he is always a little in the back- 

1 Harris does not mention Richardson, though, from 
letters printed by Mrs. Barbauld, they must have been 
known to each other. 

2 It should be noted that Johnson, although in some 
contrary moment which ' raised his corruption ', he called 
Harris 4 a prig ' to Bos well and 4 a coxcomb ' to Mrs. Thrale, 
was quite capable of taking his part if needful ; and when 
Cradock said that Hermes was too 4 heavy ', he replied ' it 
was ; but a work of that kind must be heavy \ And then 
Cradock told him the ridiculous story of the dull man who 
mistook Hermes for an imitation of Tristram Shandy. At 
which Johnson might well be justified in laughing his 
loudest. 



4 HERMES * HARRIS 67 

ground, a courteous, deferential figure, never press- 
ing itself into prominence. We get fleeting glimpses 
of him in the pages of Bos well. In April 1775 he 
was at Cambridge's pleasant house in the Twicken- 
ham meadows when Johnson and Reynolds came 
to dine there ; but little is related of him on this 
occasion, save that he paid Johnson many com- 
pliments on his recently published Journey to the 
Western Isles of Scotland — compliments in which 
Mrs. Harris, who was with him, cannot have 
participated. Johnson failed to impress that 
punctilious county-lady, and she emphatically said 
so. His , conversation, she admits, was the same 
as his writing ; but his voice and manner were 
4 dreadful '. He was amusing, but not benevolent ; 
4 awkward beyond all expression ' ; unpleasant (she 
uses cruder terms) in his dress and person, and 
a ' ferocious ' and ' unthankful ' feeder. Boswell 
she regarded as a ' low-bred kind of being '. Three 
years later we meet Harris again at an after-dinner 
reception at Sir Joshua's, chatting amicably in 
a corner with Garrick and Johnson (the latter in 
the best of post-prandial humours) about Potter's 
Aeschylus and translation and versification gener- 
ally; but Boswell again allows him to say no- 
thing very memorable beyond remarking that ' the 
chief excellence of our language is numerous prose ' — 
a sentiment which should commend itself to 
Mr. George Saintsbury. Hannah More assisted 
at this gathering of greatness, which contained, 
she says, ' scarce an expletive man or woman among 
them '. Harris must have been also well known to 
Mrs. Thrale, for she includes him in that queer 
tabular character-sketch of her masculine Streatham 
habitues, which she drew up for her own satisfaction. 
In this ' computing of abilities ', she gives Harris 

F2 



68 LATER ESSAYS 

maximum marks for scholarship, awarding him one 
mark more than Johnson. On the other hand, 
he gets but ' duck's-eggs ' for wit and humour. 1 
Harris's whole-hearted admirer, however, is Fanny 
Burney. ' He is a most charming old man,' she says, 
4 and I like him amazingly.' ' He is at the same 
time learned and polite, intelligent and humble.' 
On his womenkind she is not equally expansive. 
Mrs. Harris is ' nothing extraordinary ' — ' a so-so 
sort of woman ' ; and Miss Louisa Harris, though 
admittedly ' modest, reserved, and sensible ', is 
credited with a ' bad figure ', and is ' not hand- 
some '. It is only polite to suppose that in these 
last respects Miss Burney was more than usually 
short-sighted. 

Little remains to be said regarding Mr. Harris 
of Salisbury beyond the facts that he was painted 
by Romney 2 and Highmore, and modelled in wax 
by Isaac Gosset ; that he was a Fellow of the 
Society of Antiquaries and a Trustee of the British 
Museum. For the concluding years of his life his 
chief occupation must have been his Philological 
Inquiries. His health, never robust, gradually de- 
clined. During the Gordon Riots he was safe at 
Salisbury ; but one of his last acts in London was 
to view the great mansion which Stuart had built 
in Portman Square for Mrs. Montagu. ' I never 
saw so complete a sample of Grecian architecture,' 
he tells his son in November 1780. On December 22 
following, placid and equable to the end, he died 
in the old house in which, seventy-one years before, 
he had been born. He was buried in the north 
aisle of the Cathedral, where lay many of his ances- 

1 The reader may smile at Mrs. Thrale in judgement on 
the scholarship of two such men. But she had studied Latin, 
logic, and rhetoric under Arthur Collier. 

2 In the National Portrait Gallery. 



' HERMES ' HARRIS 69 

tors, and where there is a monument to his memory. 
His wife did not long survive him. She died at 
Bath on October 16, 1781. His daughter Louisa 
lived on to May 1826 ; and at the date of his death 
his distinguished son, having married the youngest 
daughter of Sir George Amyand, had passed from 
Berlin to St. Petersburg as Ambassador to the Court 
of Catherine II, and become a Knight of the Bath. 1 
Sufficient evidence of the social and domestic 
good qualities of the author of Hermes has been 
given in the course of this paper. Of his literary 
status it is less easy to speak. His chief ambition — 
an ambition he fully realized — was to earn the re- 
putation of a Man of Learning ; his chief draw- 
back, an oppressive display of erudition. He himself 
admits the multiplicity of his quotations. He was 
too earnest a student to be a mere amateur ; too 
matter-of-fact and methodical to mitigate, for the 
benefit of the generality, what one of his descendants 
candidly calls ' the dry philosophy of his works '. 
Yet it is insisted by his son that he was in no sense 
pedantic ; that he was generously communicative 
of his stores of information ; that, as a critic, he 
sought more for beauties than defects, and that 
he was rather indulgent than otherwise in the case 
of honest efforts that failed of their intention. To 
those specialists who are concerned with the abstract 
and formal discussions in which he delighted, his 
labours must always be of value. To the rest he 
might, in the spirit of that motto from Pindar which 
Gray prefixed to his Odes, fairly reply that he only 
professed to be ' vocal to the intelligent '. 

1 Some data, here and elsewhere, are derived from the 
notes of Mr. T. H. Baker of Salisbury, obligingly communi- 
cated by his daughter, Miss Frances Baker. 



THE JOURNEYS OF JOHN 
HOWARD 

In a letter from Paris, dated May 11, 1775, and 
printed in the Malmesbury Correspondence, occurs 
the following passage : ' I saw a day or two since 
a Mr. Howard, who with a very patriotic principle 
is here visiting the different jails of this city, in order 
to bring in a Bill into the House of Commons for the 
better regulation of English jails. . . . After he has 
done with France he purposes visiting Holland, and 
I make no doubt but that England will reap the 
benefit of his extraordinary tour, as he seems a man 
of strong sense and observation, and great perse- 
verance.' * There is no further reference to Howard 
in this series of letters ; but on the left side of the 
choir in St. Paul's is his later effigy by John Bacon, 
R.A. Although it enjoys the distinction of being 
the first statue admitted to the Cathedral, it affords 
but little idea what manner of man Howard was in 
the flesh, since, after the misguided fashion of the 
time, he masquerades in a classic costume, with 
shock hair, broken shackles at his feet, and a key in 
his right hand. It is no doubt owing to this last 
emblem that, by those whom Addison would classify 
as ' country gentlemen ', he has sometimes, at first, 
been mistaken for St. Peter. 2 For more precise 

1 Letters of the First Earl of Malmesbury, &c, 1870, i. 304. 
The writer was the Rev. Dr. Jeans, Chaplain to the British 
Embassy at Paris. 

2 Its pendant is a statue of Johnson in the same taste, by 
the same sculptor, and has been happily described as 
resembling ' a retired gladiator meditating upon a wasted 
life'. 



THE JOURNEYS OF JOHN HOWARD 71 

information as to his actual appearance, you must 
go to Mather Brown's picture in the National 
Portrait Gallery, which represents him as a plainly 
clad, hard-featured personage, with cannon curls, 
compressed lips, an aquiline nose, and a 4 dour ' 
expression which is accentuated in the print by 
Edmund Scott. 1 From this unpromising material 
must be constructed the bodily presentment of one 
of the most steadfast, strenuous, and untiring of 
English philanthropists. 

John Howard's life-story, compared with his life- 
work, here the chief theme, bulks so small that his 
early days may be briefly dismissed. Though date 
and locality are not free from doubt, it is generally 
believed that he was born at Hackney in September 
1726. His father was an upholsterer in that em- 
porium of old clothes, Long Lane, Smithfield. His 
mother died early, and after seven years at a Hert- 
ford school in which, by his own account, he was 
very imperfectly instructed, he had some further 
tuition at Newington Green under John Eames, 
F.R.S., from whom he perhaps derived a bias to 
scientific pursuits. He was then apprenticed to 
a wholesale grocer in Watling Street, a privilege for 
which his father paid £700. The elder Howard, 
dying shortly after, was opulent enough to leave his 
son and daughter comfortably off, a circumstance 
which enabled the former, on coming of age, to buy 
himself out of his indentures, and recruit his health 
by starting on a Continental tour. When he returned, 
he settled at Stoke Newington, where he had a long 
spell of nervous fever, through which he was 
assiduously nursed by his landlady, a widow named 
Loidore or Lardeau, herself an invalid. In spite of 

1 Charles Lamb, who did not like Howard, calls it ' sour- 
ness \ But ' dourness ' is the juster word. 



72 LATER ESSAYS 

the fact that she was more than double his age, 
gratitude, coupled with a highly-developed sense of 
duty, prompted him to offer her marriage. Being 
a woman of good sense, she seems, in all sincerity, 
to have discouraged his advances ; but as he 
persisted, she finally yielded. For more than two 
years they lived happily. Then her death, in 
November 1755, broke up her husband's relations 
with Stoke Newington and once more turned him 
restlessly to foreign wanderings. The Lisbon earth- 
quake, and the distress of the sufferers by that 
catastrophe, stirred his imagination ; and, early in 
1756, he embarked for the Portuguese capital in the 
Hanover packet. The Hanover packet, however, was 
seized by a French privateer, and carried into Brest. 
This cannot but be regarded as a memorable incident 
in Howard's career. At Brest, at Morlaix, and at 
Carhaix successively, he had practical acquaintance 
with the unspeakable privations of the hapless 
prisoners of war, of whom to-day we hear so much ; 
and, although his obvious integrity appears to have 
persuaded his captors to release him on parole, and 
his subsequent exertions at home eventually procured 
the liberation of his companions in misfortune, it is 
not unreasonable to conclude that the events of this 
time insensibly sowed the seed of that obstinate 
crusade which, when the fitting opportunity arrived, 
became the ruling purpose of his life. 

In 1756, however, this psychologically appropriate 
moment had not been reached. He returned to his 
old occupations ; and there is nothing to chronicle 
but the fact that, on some slender scientific preten- 
sions, he was elected a member of the Royal Society. 
He took up his abode at Cardington, a village about 
two miles south-east of Bedford, where much of his 
childhood had been spent ; and busied himself with 



THE JOURNEYS OF JOHN HOWARD 73 

the cultivation of a small property there which he 
had inherited from his father. In April 1758 he 
married again, his second wife being a Miss Henrietta 
Leeds, the daughter of a gentleman of Cambridge. 
It is recorded that his somewhat doctrinaire habit 
of mind led him to stipulate that in matters of 
domestic differences (if any) he should have the 
final word — a preliminary to which the lady un- 
accountably assented. Their union was happy, 
but brief. Although Mrs. Howard (like her prede- 
cessor) was a churchwoman, and her husband a 
dissenter, they got on excellently ; and she fully 
sympathized in all his projects and improvements. 
Her health, however, failed, and after ineffectually 
moving to Lymington for change, she died suddenly 
at Cardington on March 31, 1765, having previously 
given birth to a son. 1 

For the next seven or eight years Howard's life was 
comparatively barren of incident. It was chiefly 
spent at Cardington, where he continued to improve 
his patrimony, educating his tenants in thrift and 
sanitation, and gradually transforming what had 
been an unhealthy district into a model village. The 
Lord of the Manor, Mr. Samuel Whitbread, was 
a connexion of Mrs. Howard ; and both he and 
his wife, a daughter of Lord Cornwallis, became 
Howard's devoted friends, co-operating heartily in all 
beneficent schemes for the amelioration of the neigh- 
bourhood. Howard's health, never good, involved 

1 Howard's son, also John Howard, plays but a fitful part 
in the biography of his much-occupied father, who, in spite 
of some now wholly-discredited tradition, was deeply 
attached to him. He was carefully educated ; but about 
1785 he became incurably insane. He survived his father 
nine years. (The subject is fully examined in chap, iii of the 
valuable life of Howard contributed by Bishop Gibson to 
Methuen's ' Oxford Biographies'.) 



74 LATER ESSAYS 

frequent visits to Bath, the Bristol Hot Wells, and 
other watering places. These excursions he varied 
by swallow flights to the Continent. In 1770 we 
hear of him at Geneva ; at Paris (which he found as 
dirty as Evelyn did), and in clean Holland, his 
4 favourite country '. At Rome he saw Pope 
Clement XIV, which ' worthy good man ' dispensed 
him from the un-British homage of kneeling ; and 
he had again, after twenty years, a ' full strong 
view ' of the Young Pretender — the once ' bonnie 
Prince Charlie ' — now grown to look ' a mere sot — 
very stupid, dull, and bending double '. He also 
climbed Vesuvius, and took the temperature of the 
crater, which he afterwards made the subject of 
a paper for the Royal Society. Towards 1772 he 
was much interested in a new meeting-house at 
Bedford. But it was not until 1773, when he was in 
his forty-seventh year, that a definite purpose was 
given to his life by his appointment as High Sheriff 
of the County of Bedford. 

At this date prison life in England had reached its 
lowest stage. A prison is not supposed a paradise — 
still less ' an hermitage ' ; but the eighteenth- 
century place of confinement must have been in 
reality what Bunyan, a century before, had styled 
his jail upon the Ouse, a ' Den '• — and that of the 
worst description. In it, young and old, hale and 
sick, pure and impure, innocent and guilty, were 
herded and huddled, without distinction or occupa- 
tion ; and here, for the most trivial offences, on the 
vaguest evidence, they were detained indefinitely, in 
order to satisfy the exorbitant claims for fees made 
by rapacious wardens and turnkeys. They were 
exposed to the most wanton cruelty, systematically 
starved, savagely punished, and ruthlessly exposed 
to the dangers of infection. Not a few of them 



THE JOURNEYS OF JOHN HOWARD 75 

became imbecile or insane, while others succumbed 
to the terrible distemper generated by the total 
neglect of sanitary precautions. Some well-meaning 
attempts at bettering this deplorable state of things 
had indeed been made. In 1702 the Society for 
Promoting Christian Knowledge had drawn up a 
tentative ' Essay towards y e Reformation of New- 
gate and y e other Prisons in and about London ' ; 
and in 1728-9, Oglethorpe's Parliamentary Com- 
mittee x had exposed the indescribable barbarities 
of the Fleet-warden, Bambridge, without much 
more visible result than an addition to Thomson's 
Winter, in which the Commissioners were apostro- 
phized as the ' generous few ' who ' redressive 
sought ' 

Into the Horrors of the gloomy Jail, 
Unpitied, and unheard, where Misery moans ; 
Where Sickness pines ; where Thirst and Hunger 

burn, 
And poor Misfortune feels the Lash of Vice, 2 

and so forth, in the poet's highly ' personified ' blank 
verse. Hogarth had graphically pilloried prison-life 
in his two Progresses ; Fielding's irony had bitten it 
deeply into the opening chapters of Amelia ; and 
Goldsmith, in his Vicar, anticipating the Delitti 
e Pene of Beccaria, had incidentally touched on 
possibilities of reform. What was more, in February 
1773, Mr. Popham, M.P. for Taunton, had so far 
materialized the question as to introduce a categorical 
4 Bill for the relief of prisoners ... in the respect of 
payment of fees ' ; but after a second reading it was 
dropped for that year. Thus the Golden Age of 

1 Hogarth's picture of a sitting of this Commission now 
hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, to which it was 
presented by Lord Carlisle in 1892. 

2 Thomson's Works, 1738, i. 219. 



76 LATER ESSAYS 

the Jailer continued to flourish ; and it was at this 
juncture that Howard interposed. 

Apart from the Brest episode of seventeen years 
earlier, he had hitherto had no particular experi- 
ence of the question which now gradually became 
his abiding ambition — namely, the inspection and 
amelioration of prison-life all over the world. But 
he was not the man to be in any case what Lord 
Beaconsfield called a ' decorative inutility ' ; and 
his first assize as a Sheriff opened his eyes widely 
to conditions of which he had previously had no 
conception. He found, for example, that persons 
duly acquitted on trial were still detained in confine- 
ment for fees due to the prison authorities ; and that 
these fees often exceeded the amounts for which 
they had been originally locked up. Further, that 
needful articles of clothing were often impounded in 
default of payment. To remedy these hardships, he 
applied in his official capacity to the justices of the 
county for a salary to the jailer in place of the 
obnoxious exactions. ' The bench [his own words 
are here quoted] were properly affected with the 
grievance, and willing to grant the relief desired ; 
but they wanted a precedent for charging the 
county with the expense. I therefore rode into 
several neighbouring counties in search of a prece- 
dent ; but I soon learned that the same injustice was 
practised in them ; and looking into the prisons, 
I beheld scenes of calamity which I grew daily more 
and more anxious to alleviate. In order therefore 
to gain a more perfect knowledge of the particulars 
and extent of it, by various and accurate observation, 
I visited most of the County-Gaols in England.' x 

These plain and unpretentious words usher in 

1 The State of the Prisons in England and Wales, &c, 
1777, p. 2. 



THE JOURNEYS OF JOHN HOWARD 77 

a record of activities which, in reality, was only 
closed by the writer's death. The ground he 
covered in the visits so briefly described was excep- 
tional, and the rapidity of his movements, at that 
date, almost incredible. On the Continental excur- 
sions, with which from time to time he varied his 
English tours, he generally slept in the German 
travelling carriage he had bought ; but in England 
the common post-chaise of the period, from its fre- 
quent haltings at prison doors, became so noisome 
that he was at last obliged to take exclusively to the 
saddle. How he escaped infection from the almost 
universal small-pox and jail-fever, to say nothing of 
the historical perils of the eighteenth-century high- 
way, is nothing short of miraculous. Often he pene- 
trated into places where even the keepers shrank 
from following in his steps. The pestilential atmo- 
sphere affected his wearing-apparel, involving con- 
stant changes ; his very notebook grew foul and 
tainted, and his solitary disinfectant — a phial of 
vinegar — inoperative and offensive. Nothing but 
his scrupulous cleanliness and the Spartan simplicity 
of his dietary, generally confined to bread and milk, 
can have protected him. But in order to avoid 
discontent and dispute, it was his custom, at all 
houses of call, to pay for food which he himself did 
not eat ; while his confidential attendant, Thomas- 
son, and his endless postilions, &c, were always 
permitted to take their ease in their inn, whatever 
happened to their ascetic and inflexible employer. 

Those who are curious as to what he saw, and the 
farther he went the more he discovered, must consult 
his own faithful and unshrinking records. But a few 
instances may be given here. At Nottingham he 
found that the poorer prisoners slept in damp ' dug- 
outs ' forty-seven steps down, cut in the sandy rock ; 



78 LATER ESSAYS 

at Wolverhampton the premises were so ruinous that, 
in order to prevent the escape of those confined, they 
had to be kept in irons ; at Gloucester for men and 
women there was but 4 one small day room ', twelve 
feet by eleven. At Ely, as insecure as Wolver- 
hampton, it had been the practice to chain the 
inmates to the floor on their backs, with a spiked 
iron collar about their necks, and a heavy bar over 
their legs. At Exeter county jail, it is recorded, 
there was ' no chimney, no courtyard, no water, no 
sewer '. But if at Exeter this last convenience was 
wanting, in another case it ran uncovered through 
the damp, earth-floored den. This was at Knares- 
borough in Yorkshire, where Howard heard a loathly 
story of an officer, who, shut up for a few days as 
a town debtor, took a dog with him to defend him 
from vermin. ' The dog was soon destroyed, and 
the Prisoner's face much disfigured by them.' x At 
Plymouth there were two small chambers for felons. 
One of these — the ' Clink ' — was solely lighted and 
ventilated by a wicket in the door, seven inches by 
five, and to this contracted breathing-hole three 
prisoners under sentence of transportation ' came 
by turns for air '. At Gosport, Newport, Portsmouth, 
and Southampton the jails were equally horrible and 
evil-smelling, while at Horsham Bridewell the 
wretched captives had but one room, with the result 
that the keeper himself had died of the distemper. 
Other houses of correction revealed similar enormities. 
There were stories of prisoners who were, or had 
become, insane ; of hopeless lunatics hidden for 
years in subterranean cells. And overcrowding, bad 
air, starvation, and cruelty were not the only or the 
worst defects of the prevailing system, which, where 
money was obtainable and the keepers ' in a con- 
1 The State of the Prisons, &c, 1777, p. 410. 



THE JOURNEYS OF JOHN HOWARD 79 

catenation accordingly ', favoured and fostered all 
kinds of intemperance, immorality, gambling, and 
profanity. But for the present purpose it is time to 
cry 4 Enough '. 

To these horrors, however, during the period of 
their first collection, Howard had two important 
intermissions. One arose out of the reintroduction 
of Mr. Popham's Bill of 1773 ; and, on this occa- 
sion, Howard, fresh from his interrupted inquiries, 
was examined by a Parliamentary Committee. His 
unique personality and his evidence made a remark- 
able impression on those who heard him ; and he was 
eventually summoned to the Bar of the House of 
Commons to receive their thanks for his valuable 
communications, an honour of which he afterwards 
showed his sense in the Dedication of his first book. 
Popham's Bill, it may be added, with another, be- 
came law ; but unhappily failed of its object ; and 
it was actually left to Howard to circulate copies of 
the new Acts at his own cost to the different jails in 
the United Kingdom, where they were either evaded 
or disregarded. The other brief distraction from 
his philanthropic journey ings was his standing as 
a candidate for the borough of Bedford. This may 
be regarded as a thing to which he was prompted 
rather than predestined. He had no parliamentary 
ambition, and the political methods of the day would 
in all probability have only hindered his contem- 
plated reforms. Consequently it is fortunate that 
he failed ; and that the next best thing happened 
to him in the return of his connexion and colleague, 
Mr. Whitbread. 

For a year or two more Howard pursued his 
investigations. Besides visiting most of the jails and 
bridewells in Great Britain and Ireland he visited 
France, as mentioned in the opening lines of this 



80 LATER ESSAYS 

paper, the Austrian Netherlands, Holland, Germany, 
and Switzerland. He was not successful — or perhaps 
thought it wisest not to succeed — in obtaining 
admission to the Bastille. In some cases, however, 
he found the foreign prisons easier of access than 
those of his own country, as the law permitted 
charitable persons to visit those confined. On the 
whole, things were far more satisfactory abroad than 
at home. There was, in the first place, no jail-fever, 
which, in apathetic England, had almost come to be 
regarded as a necessary evil ; there was less drunken- 
ness, and though there was dirt and terrible torture, 
he had seen things as bad already. By the close of 
1776 he had practically completed the collection of 
his material, and begun to think of print. Matter-of- 
fact and careful, he was without literary experience ; 
but after receiving some assistance in arranging and 
co-ordinating his facts, he carried his manuscripts 
to Warrington in Lancashire, where there was a press 
at which he had decided to have his book set up, and 
where, moreover, resided his friend Dr. John Aikin 
(Mrs. Barbauld's brother), from whom he looked to 
receive much valuable advice. 

His life at Warrington was as characteristically 
methodical as any part of his career. He took 
lodgings near the printers, and devoted himself 
exclusively to the production of the book. Rising 
at two, he corrected proofs until seven. He then 
breakfasted. At eight he went to the office, where 
he remained until one, the dinner-hour of the work- 
men. He then went back to his lodgings for a frugal 
meal of bread and raisins or other dried fruit, 
generally eaten during some pedestrian expedition 
in the outskirts of the little Lancashire town, and 
afterwards washed down with a glass of water. Once 
more visiting the printing office, he remained there 



THE JOURNEYS OF JOHN HOWARD 81 

until it closed, when he repaired to Dr. Aikin's to go 
with him through any sheets which might have been 
composed during the day. If this were not requisite, 
he spent an hour with some other friend, or returned 
quietly to his simple supper and early rest, ending 
always, as it had been his practice to do throughout 
his journeys, with family prayers, often with no 
other audience than his already-mentioned servant 
Thomasson. 1 

In this way the time passed until April 1777, when, 
under the title of The State of the Prisons in England 
and Wales, with Preliminary Observations, and an 
Account of Some Foreign Prisons, the book, in its 
first form, was published from Warrington as a 
quarto volume. Pecuniary profit being in no wise 
Howard's aim, there was no subscription list ; and 
he fixed the price so low that, in Dr. Aikin's opinion, 
' had every copy been sold, he would still have 
presented the public with all the plates, and great 
part of the printing,' 2 while he distributed the book 
freely to ' most of the considerable persons in the 
kingdom, and to all his own particular friends.' 3 By 
the public it was naturally received with the welcome 
which his disinterested labours and decision of 
character had already bespoken. He rightly regarded 
his efforts as means to an end for which he could only 
pave the way. It has been said that he was a prac- 
tical rather than a philosophic reformer ; but he 
knew his limitations ; and he was content with the 
subordinate position of pioneer. Indeed, with the 
self-suppressing caution of those qui ont horreur de 
se surfaire, he habitually described himself as 4 the 
plodder, who goes about to collect materials for men 

* Brown's Memoirs, &c, 2nd ed., 1823, pp. 208-9. 

2 Aikin, as quoted by Brown, p. 210. 

3 Brown, p. 220. 

G 



82 LATER ESSAYS 

of genius to make use of ', 1 and those who catch 
sagaciously at the admissions of modesty will doubt- 
less welcome the superficial aptness of a characteriza- 
tion which really goes no further than is justified by 
the initial stages of a large ambition. What he was 
doing, was to lay the ground solidly for the labourers 
of the future ; and he had common sense enough to 
foresee that, as in most diseases, what had long 
existed would probably take long to cure. 

The dedication to the House of Commons had been 
dated from Cardington, and for a short time he 
seems to have rested from his labours in his Bedford- 
shire home. In August, by the death of his sister, 
Miss Howard, he came into £15,000 and a house in 
Great Ormond Street (No. 23). This was a welcome 
addition to his means, already severely taxed, and 
even strained, by his heavy expenditure in type and 
travel ; and it appears that eventually he expended 
the whole of the money on his philanthropic projects, 
present and future. Even the Great Ormond Street 
house was sold, though, if we may judge from a letter 
addressed to him by Hayley in 1780, he was still 
resident there at that date. But his Cardington 
retirement soon came to a close. One of the results 
of the rupture with the American Colonies had been 
the substitution]of the Thames hulks for transporta- 
tion ; and the unsatisfactory state of these ' earthly 
hells ' had early arrested his attention. He had, 
indeed, been aware of it before The State of the 
Prisons appeared ; but he had magnanimously 
refrained from animadverting on a condition of 
things which was obviously only in the making. In 
April 1778, however, he was called upon to give 
evidence before a Committee of the House of 
Commons on the subject, and he unflinchingly 
> Aikin, as quoted by Brown, p. 607. 



THE JOURNEYS OF JOHN HOWARD 83 

exposed what he regarded as the defects of the 
system, with the result that, though the idea was 
not abandoned, several salutary and material altera- 
tions were decided upon, with the carrying out of 
which Howard and two colleagues were entrusted. 
This, however, belongs to a later date. Two days 
after his appearance before the Committee, Howard 
started on another foreign tour which occupied the 
remainder of the year. At Amsterdam he was so 
unfortunate as to be knocked down by a runaway 
horse, and thrown on a heap of stones. This brought 
on an inflammatory fever, which laid him up at 
The Hague for more than six weeks. As soon as 
he recovered, he began a minute inspection of the 
famous Rasp- and Spin-Houses at Amsterdam and 
other kindred institutions in Holland. The Rasphuis 
— it should perhaps be mentioned — was a peniten- 
tiary for prisoners not convicted of capital crimes, 
who were generally employed in what Evelyn calls 
the ' very hard labour ' of rasping Brazil and Cam- 
peachy wood into powder for dyeing purposes ; 
the other was a reformatory for women undergoing 
sentence for offences of greater or less importance. 1 
The judicious regulation of both these places much 
impressed Howard. We next find him in Berlin at 
the crucial moment when Frederick the Great was 
fronting the Emperor Joseph over the succession to 
the vacant Electorate of Bavaria, a disputed question 
which was bloodlessly solved in the following year 
by the Treaty of Teschen. From Germany he passed 
to Austria and Italy, visiting the prisons at Trieste, 
and the terrible Piombi or ' leads ' of the Doge's 

1 There is a graphic description of both these establish- 
ments, obviously derived from contemporary material, in 
Sala's Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, 1863, 
iii, pp. 127-30. 

G 2 



84 LATER ESSAYS 

Palace at Venice, which were said to drive the hapless 
inmates mad with their unendurable heat. 1 And 
here may come in a couple of anecdotes which 
illustrate Howard's uncompromising disposition. 
When at Prague he was admitted to a Capuchin 
monastery. Although it was a jour maigre, he found 
that the holy fathers, in manifest defiance of the 
regulations, were feasting royally. This naturally 
roused the righteous indignation of their vegetarian 
visitor. He forthwith scolded them severely and 
even threatened to report them to the Pope — a 
threat which brought a deputation of the terrified 
delinquents next day to his hotel to implore him to 
stay his hand. This he would not promise to do ; 
but the matter was practically composed by their 
undertaking solemnly not to offend again. 2 The 
other anecdote, which belongs to a slightly later date, 
may be reproduced here because it exhibits Howard's 
inflexible courage and determination where he held 
that his just claims were involved. Travelling 
a certain narrow road in Prussia, it was the rule, for 
the convenience of passengers, to sound a horn on 
entering it. Howard had done this, when he 
encountered a King's courier coming the other way 
who had neglected the prescribed precaution. 
Howard therefore flatly refused to turn back ; and 
after sitting some time in their respective con- 
veyances, the courier was forced to withdraw, as 

1 Cf. Byron's 4 appalling cells, the " leaden roofs ",' in 
Marino Faliero, Act I, sc. n, and Rogers's Italy. These 
references have been thought to be overcharged ; and 
Howard's own°matter-of-fact words (as quoted by Stoughton, 
p. 182) are : ' The rooms for the State prisoners are over 
part of the palace in the leads, which renders confinement 
in the heat of summer almost intolerable.' 

2 This anecdote is told on the authority of Howard's 
servant, Thomasson. 



THE JOURNEYS OF JOHN HOWARD 85 

Howard persisted in declining to re »™^3* S : 

It was a perilous victory in an autocratic country , 
and! In ££e days, would probably have ended 

ItoWy, where he also visited Rome .Florence 
„„j Nanles he came back again to Holland ana 
France At Calais and Dunkirk he interested tarn- 
seinnihe condition of the ?*ff[»^ 
then detained there, an inquiry which led toacone 
snondin" investigation of the treatment of French 
Sner! in England, in both of which enterprises he 
^fortunate enough to bring about a better state 
of things When he arrived at home early in 177a, 
Knee more occupied himself in prison visit ng, 
travelling again to many prisons m unglana, ocox 
and a^d Iceland. The result of his — es w^ ;^o 
fov satisfactory as to assure him that his previous 
abom had iio y t been wholly in vain. In many eases 
noo flea ions had been made and abuses rectified. 
w,,„ n at the end of the year, he retired to Welling- 
ton to prepare the Appendix to his book which was 

it Miid that was a criminal in Newgate unuei 
entence of death. These facts, together with the 
refatTon of his Continental experiences were all 
duty £co?porated in the Appmdiz, ™d they gave 
„',t satisfaction to the author. Another matter 
wMch oecS him constantly during 1780 was an 
Tttempt to carry out the duties imposed on him in 



86 LATER ESSAYS 

in having a staunch ally in his friend Dr. Fother- 
gill, he was unhappy in his third coadjutor, Mr. 
Whatley, who seems to have been incurably obstruc- 
tive. The recital of these not uncommon difficulties 
would be tedious and even hackneyed ; but the 
death of Fothergill finally supplied Howard with 
a pretext for withdrawing from an impracticable 
task. This step he accordingly took at the beginning 
of 1781. The supplementing of the hulks by houses 
of correction on the Dutch plan, however, fared no 
better in fresh hands ; and finally came to nothing. 
But Howard's resignation opportunely left him free 
to follow his own devices. 

He was not long in coming to a decision. In May 
1781 he started on an extended tour in Northern 
Europe. Holland, as usual, was first visited ; then 
Denmark, Sweden, and Russia, in which last 
country he witnessed the horrible effects of punish- 
ment by the knout. Keeping strictly to the main 
object of his journey, and travelling at speed in 
a light carriage drawn by two horses, which he had 
bought for fifty roubles (about ten guineas), he made 
his way to St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Warsaw, 
covering many hundred miles of the ' worst country 
in Europe '. At St. Petersburg he had a fit of ague ; 
and generally, except at Warsaw, had the greatest 
difficulty in procuring the simple diet on which he 
depended. Returning by Germany, he passed again 
through Flanders, and visited the hospital at Bruges. 
The good sisters asked if he were a Catholic, to which 
he replied that he loved good people of all religions. 
1 We hope you will die a Catholic,' was the fervent 
rejoinder. The ensuing year was spent on home 
visitations. At Dublin he was made an LL.D., and 
was gratified by increased Parliamentary activity in 
the direction of prison discipline. So passed 1782. 



THE JOURNEYS OF JOHN HOWARD 87 

In January 1783 Howard, once more turned his 
steps abroad, his next objective (to use a now 
familiar word) being Spain and Portugal. Travelling 
in Spain he thought feasible enough, provided the 
traveller could ' live sparingly and lay on the floor ', 
and he found the countrymen of Don Quixote ' very 
sober and very honest '. But both in Spain and 
Portugal he failed to get any intimate acquaintance 
with the penetralia of the Inquisition, although at 
Madrid he actually offered to submit to confinement 
for a month to satisfy his curiosity. He was informed 
that none came out under three years, and that they 
took the oath of secrecy. ' I need not say [he adds] 
how horrid the secrecy and severity of it appear ; ' 
and he noted that the very sight of the court (from 
which there was no appeal) seemed to strike terror 
into the common people as they passed it. At Lille, 
in returning, he caught a fever when visiting the 
prisoners at the Tour de St. Pierre ; but the end of 
the year, after some further excursions to jails in 
England and Ireland, found him at work on a second 
Appendix to his book, and a third or revised edition 
of the whole work, with which he incorporated his 
travels since 1777, noting particularly the changes 
which his efforts had brought about. He was able 
also to cancel some former censure no longer applic- 
able. This third edition appeared in 1784, and 
a memorandum printed in a note to Brown's 
Memoirs 1 shows that in the course of his journeys 
he had covered more than 42,000 miles. 

By this date his original scheme of prison inspec- 
tion was practically completed. But a fresh purpose 
had begun to excite and absorb his still unwearied 
energy. In the above-mentioned edition he had 
incidentally made reference to a subject then 
1 Brown's Memoirs, &c, 2nd ed., 1823, p. 651. 



88 LATER ESSAYS 

exercising many minds — namely, the terrible preva- 
lence of plague and the inadequate and rudimentary 
character of the precautions observed to check the 
spread of infection from country to country. After 
fruitless written attempts to obtain particulars with 
respect to the different quarantine stations or laza- 
rettos, he at length determined to go and get 
them himself ; and in spite of cautions as to the 
difficulty and even danger of his enterprise, he set 
out in November 1785 for Marseilles, as usual via 
Holland. He had been warned by Lord Carmarthen, 
Pitt's Foreign Secretary, that he ran a risk of being 
4 committed to the Bastille ' ; but his ardour was 
unquenchable when his mind was made up. Mys- 
terious happenings at Paris, including an unexplained 
midnight visit from an official with a sword and ' an 
enormous muff ', led him to suspect that he was 
under surveillance ; and, posing discreetly as an 
English doctor, he went on by Lyons to Marseilles. 
At Marseilles a Protestant friend gravely counselled 
him to quit France as quickly as possible as he was 
manifestly ' wanted ', and had only, by good fortune, 
escaped arrest in the French capital. Nevertheless 
he persisted in visiting the local lazaretto ; and 
thence, proceeding to Toulon, actually contrived, 
' as a Frenchman ' (a fact which supposes consider- 
able linguistic capacity and some histrionic power), 
to obtain, on two occasions, admission to the Arsenal, 
and this in the face of a strict prohibition especially 
directed against ' perfidious Albion '. His next aim 
was Italy. But by this time his local well-wishers 
were seriously apprehensive as to his safety, and to 
avoid crossing the frontier he persuaded a Genoese 
coaster to carry him by sea to his destination. This 
was effected after sundry moving accidents, not the 
least of which was a three days' marooning ' in an 



THE JOURNEYS OF JOHN HOWARD 89 

almost desolate island, overgrown with myrtle, 
rosemary, and thyme '. These details are derived 
from a letter from Nice in January 1786, when its 
writer was on his way to Genoa and Leghorn, which 
latter place he reached in the following month. 
Here the authorities gave him every facility. But 
he was already beginning to sigh for the pleasant 
house at Cardington, of which Dr. Stoughton gives 
a picture in his frontispiece, where he hoped to spend 
a year or two in quiet before he died. And travelling 
must have become more irksome, for we learn 
incidentally that for the moment he had now no 
servant, and by this time he was sixty. 

From Leghorn he went on via Pisa to Florence, 
noting with satisfaction much improvement since his 
former visit, and from Florence to Rome. Pius VI 
had succeeded to the Pontificate and was as indul- 
gent to him as Clement XIV. More than that, he 
gave him his benediction. ' I know you Englishmen 
do not value these things, but the blessing of an old 
man can do you no harm.' After Rome came 
Naples ; and after Naples, Malta, where he stayed 
three weeks. Armed with credentials from Sir 
William Hamilton, at that time our Ambassador at 
Naples, he promptly waited on the Grand Master, 
who received him warmly and at once sent him 
a propitiatory present of butter. But Howard 
unfortunately was not able to answer in kind. Being 
asked his opinion of the arrangements at the famous 
hospitals, he replied so candidly that, although some 
definite modifications were made, and his visits were 
still permitted, he received no more table luxuries. 
4 So my tea was ever after with dry bread,' he writes 
laconically in a letter from Zante, whence he pur- 
posed sending a barrel of currants to make a Christ- 
mas pudding for the Cardington poor. (Zante, it 



90 LATER ESSAYS 

may be remarked, must have been a paradise of 
cheapness, for meat was but 2d. a pound !) After 
making his way from Zante to Smyrna, he finally 
resolved ' to perform Quarantine himself ', and to 
this end embarked for Venice (where the first 
lazaretto had been established) in a shijD ' with afoul 
bill '. The voyage as usual was not uneventful. The 
ship was attacked by a Tunisian privateer, and but 
for the fortunate havoc wrought by a cannon charged 
with spike-nails, and said by Aikin to have been 
pointed by Howard himself, they might all have been 
carried away to Barbary as slaves. 

At Venice Howard seems to have undergone to the 
full the hardships of primitive quarantine. The so- 
called ' new lazaretto ' was horribly dirty, full of 
vermin, and wholly unfurnished. A transfer to the 
4 old lazaretto ' was no improvement ; and it was 
only by a third move, and the help of as much lime- 
wash as he could procure, that he was able to restore 
his health, already considerably affected by the dis- 
comforts of his previous internments. He did not, 
however, regret the step he had taken, as it had 
taught him much. To use his own words : ' The 
regulations are admirable, if they were better kept.' 
But matters were not improved by the intelligence 
he now received from England. He learned to his 
annoyance that funds were being collected for 
erecting a statue to him, a proposal inexpressibly 
distasteful to a man of his unpretentious tempera- 
ment. He immediately protested, and begged that 
the design might at once be abandoned, a course 
which was reluctantly taken. The other and more 
serious news announced that his son, after various 
ominous irregularities, had become seriously de- 
ranged. 1 

1 See note at p. 73. 



THE JOURNEYS OF JOHN HOWARD 91 

Hastening homewards as quickly as possible, 
Howard started from Venice by Trieste for Vienna. 
But his progress was slow. He was mucrTreduced 
by fatigue of body and mind, and the low fever 
contracted in the unwholesome lazarettos still clung 
about him. At Vienna, on Christmas Day 1786, 
when he was on the point of quitting the Austrian 
capital, he was summoned to a private interview 
with the Emperor Joseph II. The son of Maria 
Theresa was himself a confirmed, if not always 
judicious, reformer, and he listened affably to 
Howard's frank and fervent exposure of the short- 
comings of prevailing prison arrangements, and the 
necessity for the discipline of the criminal. 1 ' The 
Emperor shaked me by the hand, and said I had 
given him much pleasure.' By February 1787 
Howard was back in London, only to find that his son 
had completely lost his reason ; and that, for the 
moment, there was nothing to be done but to keep 
him under control, with faint hope of his recovery. 
In these circumstances the unfortunate but inde- 
fatigable father set out afresh on a fifth tour of the 
jails of the United Kingdom. At Dublin he met 
John Wesley, who writes in his Diary for June 26, 
1787 : ' I had the pleasure of a conversation with 
Mr. Howard, I think one of the greatest men in 
Europe. Nothing but the mighty power of God can 
enable him to go through his difficult and dangerous 
employments.' 2 After this Howard retired once 
more to Warrington to superintend the production 
of his new work, An Account of the Principal Lazarettos 

1 Howard is said to have been fond of a motto which he 
had seen at Odescalchi's hospital at San Michele in Rome : 
Parum est improbos coercere poena, nisi probos efficias 
disciplina — an axiom which, he held, expressed ' the grand 
purpose of all civil policy relative to criminals \ 

2 Wesley's Journal, 1901, iv. 370. 



92 LATER ESSAYS 

in Europe. This was published early in 1789, and 
besides recording the results of his Continental 
travels, included much that was supplementary to 
The State of the Prisons. With the appearance of the 
lazaretto book Howard's life-purpose was virtually 
achieved. He was advanced in years, and might 
reasonably look forward to the term of his labours. 
But the illness of his son, who had been now formally 
removed to a private asylum at Leicester, had 
effectively broken up that dream of the much- 
enduring, a sequestered old age ; and many seem- 
ingly finished courses issue forlornly in a Teucer-like 
* Cms ingens iterabimus aequor '. So it fared with 
John Howard. In July 1789, after regulating his 
affairs with minute care, which seemed like a pre- 
vision of the end, he set out on an indeterminate 
tour to the East, bidding farewell to his friends with 
a prophetic finality. ' We shall soon meet in Heaven, ' 
he said to one of them ; ' the way to Heaven from 
Grand Cairo is as near as from London '. His first 
letter home was from Moscow, which he had reached 
through Holland and Germany. Wherever he 
stopped, hospitals and prisons were thrown open to 
him. He was then on his road to Warsaw, his 
ultimate goal being Constantinople ; and his general 
purpose, in his own words, ' to investigate and 
ascertain with precision the cause of the plague '. 
But the war between Russia and Turkey changed 
his plans by attracting his attention to the military 
and naval hospitals ' towards the Black Sea ', and 
he was anxious to give a fair trial to his favourite 
recipe, that Fever Powder of Dr. James so dear to 
his contemporaries from royalty downwards, and 
so deadly to poor Oliver Goldsmith. He reached 
Kherson in Russian Tartary in November, having 
been robbed en route ; and soon had ample oppor- 



THE JOURNEYS OF JOHN HOWARD 93 

trinity for discovering the manifold defects of the 
hospitals. Cleanliness was unknown ; the wards 
were offensive and the patients dirty ; diseases of all 
kinds were prevalent, and contagion entirely dis- 
regarded. But in the last entry of his note-book he 
was able to record that his courageous and urgent 
remonstrances were not entirely in vain, and that, 
in the matter of sanitation especially, much good 
had already resulted. 

A fortnight later he was dead. He caught a fever 
in visiting a young lady, to whose bedside he had 
been summoned. Whether his ailment was the camp 
fever from which she was suffering, or whether he 
had taken a chill in going to her assistance, is not 
certain ; but he felt from the first that the result 
would be fatal. He dosed himself with James's 
Powder ; but prepared placidly for the end. He 
desired that he should be buried in the village of 
Dauphinovka (now Stephanovka), north of Kherson ; 
that his funeral should be without pomp, monument, 
or monumental inscription ; that a sundial should 
be placed over his grave, and that he should be 
forgotten. These injunctions, conveyed to his friend 
Admiral Priestman, an English officer in the Russian 
service, were only partially carried out. His grave 
was marked, not by a sundial, but by a small, white- 
washed brick pyramid without inscription ; and 
although the burial service of the Church of England 
was duly read over the remains, a quiet funeral was 
found to be impracticable. The peasants flocked to 
the obsequies of the common benefactor, and he was 
followed to his last home by some two or three 
thousand spectators, an escort of cavalry, and a crowd 
of carriages, including the sumptuous equipage of 
the Prince of Moldavia ' drawn by six horses covered 
with scarlet cloth '. 



94 LATER ESSAYS 

One of the most notable things in Howard's career 
is the dogged way in which, having decided that his 
mission in life was that of Inspector-General of 
Prisons to the world at large, he entered on the 
duties of his self-imposed office. Everything, from 
the first, was subordinated to the task in hand — 
namely, that systematic assembling of pieces de 
conviction which he regarded as an indispensable 
preliminary to any practical improvement in the 
existing state of things. This was to be no leisurely 
jog-trot in search of the picturesque ; no casual 
collecting of medals by an opulent Grand Tourist. 
In his earlier days he himself had been a purchaser 
of pictures and a frequenter of concerts. But it was 
not so now. ' I have unremittingly pursued the 
object of my journey,' he wrote in 1781, ' and have 
looked into no palaces, or seen any curiosities.' 
Burke, consciously or unconsciously, expanded this 
in his enthusiastic eloge at Bristol. Speaking of 
Howard, he said, ' He visited all Europe, not to 
survey the sumptuousness of palaces,' or ' to form 
a scale of the curiosity of modern art ', but ' to 
remember the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, 
to visit the forsaken, and compare and collate the 
distresses of all men in all countries '. And Cowper 
echoes or anticipates Burke (for their words belong 
to the same year) in his poem of Charity : 

To traverse seas, range kingdoms, and bring home, 
Not the proud monuments of Greece or Rome, 
But knowledge such as only dungeons teach, 
And only sympathy like thine could reach . . . 
Speaks a divine ambition, and a zeal, 
The boldest patriot might be proud to feel. 

Akin to Howard's tenacity of purpose was his 
fearlessness. Lord Fisher's ' Fear God, and Dread 



THE JOURNEYS OF JOHN HOWARD 95 

Nought ' might well have been .his motto. No 
doubt to his indomitable courage is to be traced 
something of the marked immunity from insult 
which he enjoyed and the fact, vouched for by him- 
self, that he was so rarely robbed. Once only, in the 
very haunt and region of ' clyfaking ', he lost ' a large 
new pocket-handkerchief ', but even this was in due 
course returned to him. His transparent honesty, 
his manifest purity of motive, and his persuasive 
benevolence impressed all about him. An incident 
related in Brown's Memoirs is here to the point. 
4 During an alarming riot at the Savoy, the prisoners 
had killed two of their keepers, and no person dared 
to approach them until the intrepid Howard insisted 
on entering their prison. In vain his friends, in vain 
the jailers endeavoured to dissuade him : in he went 
among two hundred ruffians, when such was the 
effect of his mild and benign manner that they soon 
listened to his remonstrances, represented their 
grievances, and at last allowed themselves to be 
quietly reconducted to their cells.' 1 This disregard 
of consequences, as we have seen from his Malta 
visit, extended to his speech. It was impossible to 
prevent him from saying what he believed to be the 
truth ; and though to potentates like the Emperor 
Joseph his plain speaking must have been a refresh- 
ing novelty, many diplomatic green-baize doors 
must have been hurriedly closed during the cold 
outpour of his incorruptible veracity. 

That Howard's work, in its essence, was pro- 
visional and preparatory, and that his magnetic 
personal influence ceased with his death, may be 
admitted. But he was one of those unselfish 
reformers who, secure in the inherent soundness of 
their cause, are content to leave to the future — the 
1 Brown's Memoirs, 2nd ed., 1823, p. 393. 



96 LATER ESSAYS 

dilatory and deliberate future — the task of com- 
pleting what they themselves have painfully and 
laboriously begun. Nevertheless, it was Howard 
who set the ball rolling ; and with Howard alone 
originate the modern improvements in prison dis- 
cipline. For the rest, he was emphatically what 
Pope would have called ' a right good man ' — a 
faithful friend, an affectionate husband, a practising 
Christian. He was liberal to servants and depen- 
dents, and largely charitable to his poorer neighbours, 
in whose welfare he took the keenest interest. If 
his conception of justice was sometimes considered 
austere, it was not unfrequently tempered by a sense 
of humour. Despite his ' dour ' expression, he is 
said to have been gentle in manners and very cour- 
teous — especially to women. With weaker vessels 
of his own sex, it is intelligible that his strict sense 
of duty, and his rigidly abstemious habits, occasion- 
ally exposed him to the charge of singularity. That 
is the involuntary homage of the self-indulgent to 
the self-respecting. But no one could accuse him of 
hypocrisy, for he was unaffected by human praise 
and blame. His one object in life was to get on with 
what he conceived to be his special vocation — to 
alleviate the misery of a large section of his suffering 
fellow-creatures. And if ever there was a man who 
acted religiously on the Pauline precept, ' Remember 
them that are in bonds,' that man was John Howard, 



'THE LEARNED MRS. CARTER' 

Sir Thomas Lawrence's crayon drawing at the 
National Portrait Gallery represents Mrs. Carter as 
a downcast -eyed and benignant old lady in a white 
muslin ' mob ' with a broad scarlet ribbon. In 
Mackenzie's engraving of the cameo in wax which 
was modelled by Joachim Smith for Lady Charlotte 
Finch, one of Mrs. Carter's many friends, she is 
shown with the clear-cut profile of a dignified and 
handsome woman ; and this is affirmed by her 
nephew and executor to be ' a very good and strik- 
ing likeness \* Here she wears an elaborate round- 
eared lace head-dress. To supplement these appar- 
ently conflicting similitudes, we may reproduce the 
written snapshot of a contemporary who met Mrs. 
Carter, in 1785, at one of Mrs. Vesey's ' Babels '. 
' She seems about sixty [she was really sixty- 
eight] and is rather fat ; she is no way striking in 
her appearance, and was dressed in a scarlet gown 
and petticoat, with a plain undress cap and perfectly 
flat head. A small work-bag was hanging at her 
arm, out of which she drew some knitting as soon 
as she was seated ; but with no fuss or airs. She 
entered into the conversation with that ease which 
persons have when both their thoughts and words 
are at command, and with no toss of the head, no 
sneer, no emphatic look, in fact no affected con- 
sequence of any kind.' To this should be prefixed 
Miss Burney's verdict at Bath five years earlier 
After speaking of her as ' noble-looking ', she goes 
on — ' I never saw age so graceful in the female sex 

' Pennington's Memoirs, 4th ed., 1825, i. 501 n. 

H 



98 LATER ESSAYS 

yet ; her whole face seems to beam with goodness, 
piety, and philanthropy.' * 

Miss Alice Gaussen, Mrs. Carter's latest biographer, 
from whom the first-quoted passage is borrowed, 2 
frankly confesses that her heroine's life has no 
story. This is so, though Miss Gaussen has gallantly 
done her best to disprove it. Elizabeth, or Eliza, 
Carter was born at Deal on December 16. 1717, 
being the eldest daughter of the Rev. Nicholas 
Carter, D.D., Perpetual Curate of Deal Chapel, and 
one of the six preachers at Canterbury Cathedral. 
Elizabeth's mother, Dr. Carter's first wife, was the 
only daughter and heiress of Richard Swayne of 
Bere Regis in Dorset. The greater part of the con- 
siderable fortune she brought her husband dis- 
appeared with the bursting of the South Sea Bubble, 
a disaster which is supposed to have induced, or 
promoted, the decline of which she eventually died, 
when Elizabeth was about ten years old. Dr. Carter 
was an accomplished Greek, Latin, and Hebrew 
scholar, who acted as preceptor to his children. 
His daughter seems early to have formed the desire 
to follow in his steps ; but her initial efforts were 
not equal to her aspirations. She was at first as 
preternaturally slow and dull as Goldsmith, so 
much so, indeed, that her desponding parent re- 
peatedly exhorted her to desist from what he 
regarded as an unsound ambition. But by dint of 
early rising and dogged perseverance, combined 
with such extraneous aids to erudition as wet 
towels, coffee, green tea, and snuff (all of which are 
specified), she gradually overcame her native dis- 
abilities, although, in the process, she probably laid 

1 Diary, 1904, i. 391. 

» A Woman of Wit and Wisdom, by Miss Alice C. C. Gaussen, 
1906, p. 150. 



' THE LEARNED MRS. CARTER ' 99 

the foundation of the distressing chronic headaches 
which lasted her lifetime. Her tastes were primarily 
linguistic. French she acquired aufond from a refugee 
Huguenot pastor at Canterbury with whom she 
boarded for a twelvemonth ; while in Latin, Greek, 
and Hebrew her father instructed her in common 
with her brothers. Spanish, Italian, and German 
she taught herself, going on in later life to learn 
something of Portuguese and finally of Arabic. As 
a linguist she put the spirit above the letter, pro- 
fessing to care little for grammar, though, as a 
matter of fact, in this respect she was more fully 
equipped than she pretended. Johnson, at all 
events, placed her very high among contemporary 
Grecians, since he once said of an unnamed though 
celebrated scholar (Dr. Birkbeck Hill says ' perhaps 
Langton '), ' that he understood Greek better than 
any one whom he had ever known, except Elizabeth 
Carter ' ; and it is on record that she once effectively 
confuted Archbishop Seeker with regard to a Greek 
construction. Language, however, did not wholly 
absorb her youthful energies. She was very fond 
of mathematics, history, and geography — ancient 
geography in particular. ' She was, literally ' — 
says her first biographer — ' better acquainted with 
the meanderings of the Peneus and the course of 
the Ilissus, than she was with those of the Thames 
or Loire ' x — a perverted proficiency which, accord- 
ing to a well-known anecdote, should have earned 
her the sympathy of Charles Lamb. In addition, 
she was especially partial to astronomy and astro- 
logy. Music, too, attracted her. She played, not 
very successfully by her own account, on the spinet 
as well as on that eighteenth-century corrective to 
melancholy, the German flute. She dabbled also 
1 Memoirs, 4th ed., 1825, i. 17. 
H 2 



100 LATER ESSAYS 

in drawing and painting. All this intense applica- 
tion, abstruse and otherwise, was, it must be con- 
fessed, not undi versified by lighter distractions. 
Besides being unpretentious, she was cheerful and 
sociable, qualities which speedily made her a desir- 
able inmate of many county houses ; and she often 
paid long winter visits to relatives in London, 
where she soon found admiring friends. Nor, not- 
withstanding a serious cast of mind, were her 
tastes inexorably ascetic. Not only was she, unlike 
many of her contemporaries, a fanatic for fresh 
air, and used, as her solitary cosmetic, cold water, 
but at Deal she was accustomed to vary her desk 
work (as Dickens did) by vigorous walking exercise ; 
and, as a classic, must have interpreted the Horatian 
neque tu choreas sperne as applicable to both sexes, 
since, for a time at least, her unexpended vitality 
found its escape in energetic dancing. She speaks, 
on one occasion, of having walked three miles in 
a high wind, danced nine hours, and then walked 
home again. After thus ' playing the rake ', as 
she calls it, it is not surprising to find that she took 
part, with her brothers and sisters, in a perform- 
ance of Cato (presumably the memorable work of 
Mr. Joseph Addison), the title-r61e being read by 
her father — nay, that once, when Canterbury went 
stage mad, she even acted a king and wore a sword. 
When she was nearing twenty, she seems to have 
had some prospect of a Court appointment — a 
prospect which not unnaturally found favour with 
her father. Recognizing, with Marcus Aurelius and 
Matthew Arnold, that ' even in a palace life may 
be led well ', he wrote to her from Bath an elegant 
Latin epistle expressing his concurrence. 1 But, 

1 i Virtus est quid cuique proprium in omnibus locis ; virtus 
igitur non minus propria atque integra est in aulis, quam in 
ture? (Memoirs, 1825, 4th ed., i. 14 n.) 



4 THE LEARNED MRS. CARTER ' 101 

apart from the preliminary study of German which 
he enjoined, the plan apparently came to nothing ; 
and with it, due allowance being made for different 
temperaments, the chances of a familiar record 
corresponding with, if not rivalling, the picturesque 
Kew and Windsor pages of Fanny Rurney's Diary. 

Some time in the following year, however, she 
issued privately, as a quarto of twenty-four pages, 
a selection from the numerous occasional verses she 
had contributed to the Gentleman's Magazine since 
1734, under the signature of ' Eliza '. The pamphlet 
had no author's or publisher's name ; but it mani- 
festly came from the press of Edward Cave, since 
there was a cut of St. John's Gate, Clerkenwell, on 
the title page ; and Cave, who printed her father's 
sermons in this very year, 1738, was well known to 
him. The verses are of a mingled yarn and mainly 
imitative. Youthful paraphrases of Horace ; lines to 
the memory of Her Sacred Majesty Caroline of Ans- 
bach, recently deceased ; ode to her thresher-poet, 
Stephen Duck, beginning ingenuously— 'Accept, 
O Duck, the Muse's grateful lay ' ; an address to 
Fortune, palpably echoing Young — these, with a 
deprecatory motto from Euripides, make up the 
farrago libelli. It would be too much to say that 
they show great poetical promise ; and, with two 
exceptions, she herself did not venture to reprint 
them. 

But they are interesting on another ground — 
namely, that they inaugurate that lifelong friend- 
ship of the writer with Samuel Johnson, which had 
its origin in their year of publication. To the 
8 Poetical Essays ' in the Gentleman's Magazine for 
February 1738, ' Eliza ' had contributed ' A Riddle \ 
In the following April, Johnson responded by two 
Greek and Latin epigrams, to the former of which 



102 LATER ESSAYS 

lie thus refers in an undated but obviously earlier 
letter to Cave. ' I have composed a Greek epigram 
to Eliza, and think she ought to be celebrated in 
as many different languages as Lewis le Grand.' 1 
From this it would follow that he must already 
have been introduced to her, or was shortly to 
make her acquaintance. In any case, after Cave's 
death, he expressly recalled the fact that Cave had 
first brought them together. ' Poor dear Cave ! 
I owed him much ; for to him I owe that I have 
known you,' he wrote. 2 In the next month (May), 
his own London came out anonymously, and, in the 
brief space of a week, ran into two editions. But 
at this date the worthy Dr. Carter, then Vicar of 
Tilmanstone, had never so much as heard of him. 
8 You mention Johnson,' he tells his daughter in 
June, no doubt apropos of the epigrams, ' but that 
is a name with which I am utterly unacquainted, 
Neither his scholastic, critical, or poetical character 
ever reached my ears.' 3 This ignorance was excus- 
able ; for, in truth, Johnson had published prac- 
tically nothing. He was a new-comer at St. John's 
Gate, having only in the preceding year made 
with Garrick his adventurous invasion of the great 
city he was to satirize so sternly, and to love so 
well. 

Almost simultaneously with Johnson's London 
had appeared Pope's satire, One Thousand Seven 
Hundred and Thirty-Eight ; and Pope (as all the 
world knows) had generously exjoressed his opinion 
that the new imitator of Juvenal would soon be 
unearthed. It is with Pope that Mrs. Carter's 
prentice prose essay is connected. Under the title 

1 Hill's Johnson, 1887, i. 122. 

2 Hill's Johnson's Letters, 1892, i. 55. 

3 Memoirs, 1825, i. 39. 



' THE LEARNED MRS. CARTER 5 loS 

An Examination of Mr. Pope's Essay on Man ; 
translated from the French of M. Crouzaz, M.R.A. 
of Sciences at Paris and Bordeaux, and Professor of 
Philosophy and Mathematics at Lausanne, she trans- 
lated the Swiss critique of those ambiguous utter- 
ances with respect to revealed religion from which 
Warburton afterwards endeavoured to extricate the 
Twickenham poet. Her version was extremely- 
careful, and earned a eulogistic Latin epigram from 
her father. But its theme belongs to Pope's bio- 
graphy rather than Mrs. Carter's ; and there is no 
evidence that she had any personal relations with 
Pope himself. She followed up this translation 
from the French by another, from the Italian, of 
Algarotti's Newtonianismo per le Dame, thus Eng- 
lished — Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy explained, 
for the Use of the Ladies, in six Dialogues, on Light 
and Colours. This, which Cave printed, was also 
held to be capably executed, and was highly praised 
by Dr. Birch and others. Count Algarotti was then 
in England, and it is possible that his translatress 
may have met him. But it must be concluded that 
these efforts were either commissions, or what 
Carlyle would have called mere journey-work in 
defect of better, for she seldom referred to them. 
Her biographer finds evidence that the dedication 
of the Algarotti was corrected in proof by Johnson. 
Through Johnson, too, it must have been that, 
at this date, Miss Carter made the acquaintance of 
another of Cave's contributors, the notorious and 
unfortunate Richard Savage. Her biographer prints 
two of the letters Savage wrote to her in May 1739, 
or a few weeks before his final departure (for his 
own good and to the relief of his friends) into exile 
at Swansea. Their pretext is a permission, implied 
or given by the lady to Savage, to send her a printed 



104 LATER ESSAYS 

copy of his Life ; and they are couched in those 
terms of florid adulation which were apparently 
their writer's standard of compliment. Another of 
her correspondents at this period was the precocious 
prodigy, John Philip Barretier, who was reported to 
have mastered five languages at the mature age of 
nine. He was now seventeen, and hearing from 
some of the swarming refugees at Canterbury of the 
rival acquirements of ' Eliza ', had expressed a desire 
to be permitted to write to her. ' Eliza ', having, 
as in duty bound, sought counsel of her father and 
obtained his permission (in Latin), letters were 
accordingly exchanged. Two of Barretier's have 
been preserved. By all accounts he was a worthy 
and exemplary young man. But his conception of 
a correspondance d'esprit must have been framed 
upon faulty models. For his epistles, although they 
include some interesting personal details regarding 
his views and pursuits, are largely occupied by 
stilted verbiage and pretentious polyglot. He 
apostrophizes his correspondent in French, as the 
Nymphe Elize, who gets Apollo to write her verses ; 
and in Latin, as Virgo nobilissima, Angliae sidus. 
orbis literati decus — and so forth. Even her admiring 
biographer and executor is constrained to confess 
that all this is more in the vein of a French petit- 
maitre than of the anticipated Scholar, Philosopher, 
and Theologian. And, indeed, it is difficult to 
believe that this boyish rigmarole can ever have 
been acceptable to its accomplished young recipient, 
whose leading characteristic was common sense and 
whose dislike of flattery was unaffected. That she 
acknowledged the first of Barretier's communica- 
tions is clear from his words in the second ; but we 
have no information as to the nature of her reply. 
In October 1740 Barretier died ; and Johnson wrote 



' THE LEARNED MRS. CARTER ' 105 

an account of him for Mr. Urban's pages. 1 But by 
this time Miss Carter had found a new correspondent 
as well as a lifelong friend in the Miss Catherine 
Talbot to whom so many of her letters were hence- 
forth to be addressed. 

Miss Talbot — for our present purpose — deserves 
a fuller notice than either Savage or Barretier. She 
was the only daughter of the Rev. Edward Talbot, 
who was the second son of Bishop Talbot of Durham, 
and brother to Charles, first Lord Talbot, and Lord 
High Chancellor of England. Her father died in 
1720, and in the same year, five months after his 
death, she was born. Dr. Seeker, afterwards BishojD 
of Oxford and Archbishop of Canterbury, had been 
Edward Talbot's closest friend, and in course of 
time the widow and her daughter became per- 
manent members of the Seeker household. Miss 
Carter first met Miss Talbot at the house of a Canter- 
bury friend, through Wright the astronomer, and 
they became greatly attached to each other. Miss 
Carter was three years older than Miss Talbot ; but 
Miss Talbot had already a certain social reputation 
for exceptional ability ; and, as related in an earlier 
paper of this series, contributed to the once famous 
Athenian Letters. She had been very carefully 
educated, had considerable intellectual gifts, and 
a lively imagination. Her youth had been passed 
among learned and distinguished personages, one 
of her best and most valued advisers being the great 
Bishop Butler of the Analogy, who was devoted to 
her father. Under her auspices Miss Carter was 
speedily at home in the Seeker circle. She became 
a great favourite with the Bishop, who soon play- 
fully addressed her as 4 Madam Carter ', and she 

1 Gentleman'' s Magazine, 1740, x. C12, and 1741, xi. 87. 



106 LATER ESSAYS 

was always a persona grata at the Bishop's Oxford 
Palace of Cuddesdon, and the Archiepiscopal Palace 
at Lambeth. She had, in fact, found a suitable field 
for the evolution of the more serious side of her 
character underlying the thirst for learning which 
had hitherto seemed to absorb her energies, and (if 
she ever had them) her ambitions. The Algarotti 
translation had already introduced her to an amiable 
Countess of Hertford to whom Thomson had dedi- 
cated his Spring. In the Seeker coterie she was to 
come into contact not only with such aristocratic 
luminaries as Lyttelton and William Pulteney, Earl 
of Bath, but with numerous other people, learned 
or clerical, who were fully capable of estimating, at 
the right value, both her unusual acquirements and 
her natural parts. This happy consummation she 
manifestly owed to Miss Talbot. And it is not 
unreasonable to assume that to Miss Talbot also 
she was indebted for the development of those early 
principles and that graver note in her character 
which led Dr. Burney, years after, to speak of 
' Carter's piety and learning ', and to give the 
priority to ■ piety '. 

However this may be, there is no doubt that to 
Miss Talbot she was indebted for the stimulus which 
prompted her to enter upon the central task of her 
life, the translation of Epictetus — 

That halting slave, who in Nicopolis 
Taught Arrian, when Vespasian's brutal son 
Cleared Rome of what most shamed him — 

i. e. the Philosophers. At Cuddesdon and Lambeth 
it seems to have been the custom to have daily 
readings of the best authors, ancient and modern ; 
and Miss Talbot, who had been austerely studying 
Epictetus before breakfast, was greatly exercised by 



' THE LEARNED MRS. CARTER ' 107 

the absence of a satisfactory version of that philo- 
sopher's homely discourses, as reported by Arrian. 
She eventually persuaded her friend to undertake 
the preparation of an adequate rendering of his 
entire remains, duly equipped with [introduction 
and notes. With the concurrence of Dr. Seeker, 
Miss Carter began her work in 1749, and in her 
thirty-second year. Working slowly, and avoiding 
fatigue, she continued to be engaged on it until its 
completion in 1756. The book went to the press 
in the following year, and was issued as a subscrip- 
tion quarto in 1758. There were one thousand and 
thirty-one subscribers at a guinea, and one thousand 
two hundred and sixty-eight copies were struck off. 
The result to the translator was a profit of nearly 
a thousand pounds. A second edition in two 
volumes 12mo appeared in 1759 ; a third in 1768. 
A fourth edition followed, after the translator's 
death. The full title of the book was — All the 
Works of Epictetus, which are now extant ; consisting 
of his Discourses, preserved by Arrian, in four Books, 
The Enchiridion, 1 and Fragments. Translated from 
the original Greek, by Elizabeth Carter. With an 
Introduction, and Notes, by the Translator. It was 
printed by Samuel Richardson, the novelist ; and 
sold by Millar, Rivington and the Dodsleys. And 
to it was prefixed a poetically irregular but theo- 
logically orthodox ode by M. H., reversed initials 
which are understood to veil the identity of a new 
friend, Hester or Hecky Mulso, afterwards Mrs. 
Chapone, to whom Miss Carter had recommended 
' the Stoic Philosophy, as productive of Fortitude '. 
The success of the translation was both merited 
and adventitious. ' Merited ' because it was a 

1 The Enchiridion had been translated, at a hand-gallop, 
by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, out of the Latin. 



108 LATER ESSAYS 

conscientious piece of craggy hard work, pursued with 
adequate equipment and achieved by unflagging 
perseverance. It was not, in any sense, like the 
performances of Fielding's Mr. Bookweight, 4 merely 
a handsome way of asking one's friends for a 
guinea ' — an anticipation of ' Proposals ' which it 
was never intended to materialize. But it was 
' adventitious ' in that Miss (or as we may now 
call her, Mrs.) Carter's troops of friends, together 
with her established reputation as a learned lady, 
made the task of soliciting subscriptions an easy 
matter. 1 And there was a third reason which also 
greatly helped her. It was rightly held to be remark- 
able that a work distinguished by so much solid 
erudition should have come from a woman. This 
alone was sufficient to justify the ' Philaretes ' of 
St. John's Gate in likening her to the famous 
Mme Dacier. Finally, and this is perhaps the best 
argument of all, her Epictetus was, at this date, the 
best available rendering in English of a book con- 
cerning which there was a certain floating curiosity. 
It continued to sell through the remainder of the 
century ; and her friend Dr. Seeker, by this time 
Archbishop of Canterbury, complained humorously 
that while his own invaluable sermons were to be 
procured at half-price, Madam Carter's Epictetus 
fetched nearly as much as the original subscription. 
Even in 1768, when the third edition came out, 
Messrs. Rivington of the ' Bible and Sun ' in St. 
Paul's Churchyard, found it worth their while to 
advertise concurrently a ' beautiful edition ' in 
royal quarto. 2 

1 Many persons, who figure in these pages, subscribed. 
Johnson, of course, is in the list, and Heberden took six 
copies. 

2 These unavoidable bibliographical details need not here 



' THE LEARNED MRS. CARTER » 109 

This translation, it has been said, occupied Mrs. 
Carter about nine years, a period which may at 
first sight seem to be excessive. But the work 
was interrupted by many miscellaneous avocations. 
Besides those domestic functions which she con- 
scientiously regarded as part of her calling in life, 
she had family duties of a more exacting character. 
Her father had married again ; and the training of 
her youngest brother, Henry, fell almost exclusively 
on her — until, in 1756, he entered a pensioner at 
Bene't College, Cambridge. This must have taken 
much of her time ; and, as her biographer observes, 
was then probably the only instance of a student 
at Cambridge who was indebted for his previous 
education to one of the other sex. In any case, 
taken in connexion with her labours as a translator, 
these employments sufficiently account for the fact 
that her purely literary output for some years seems 
to have been confined to a couple of contributions 
to Johnson's Rambler, Nos. 44 and 100. The former 
of these is a serious but not sombre contrast between 
superstition and religion ; the latter, acting up to 
the Circum praecordia ludit of its motto, rallies, in 
a sprightly manner, the unprofitable rewards of 
fashionable dissipation. Both papers show that 
she might have easily competed, if not with the 
Great Cham, at all events with Richardson and 
Hawkesworth. 

be extended by minuter examination of Mrs. Carter's chef- 
d'ceuvre. The critics of the day liberally recognized its 
merits, and Lyttelton rightly commended ' the deep learning, 
correct judgement, and truly Christian piety ' displayed in 
the introduction and notes. But it has now been superseded 
by the labours of Long and later scholars. As to the 
doctrines of Epictetus, the curious may consult Dr. Abbott's 
Silanus the Christian, and the charming anthology of 
Mr. Hastings Crossley in the Golden Treasury Series. 



110 LATER ESSAYS 

. But although her prose work was inconsiderable, 
and she attached little importance to her first 
poetical flights, she still intermittently adventured 
in verse. An anonymous Ode to Melancholy was 
printed in the Gentleman 1 s Magazine for November 
1739, and was greatly admired — by her admirers. 
A more ambitious Ode to Wisdom, much circulated 
(privately) circa 1746, was actually appropriated by 
Richardson, who conveyed it en bloc to the earlier 
pages of Clarissa, then in progress, and even went 
so far as to let his heroine set the last three stanzas 
to music (Letter liv). Upon expostulation, he 
explained (of course at considerable length) that he 
had desired to ' do honour to the sex ', and enliven 
his little [!] work, already ' perhaps too solemn ', by 
so valuable an addition to its pages — an amende 
honorable which was, of course, graciously accepted. 1 
Later, by the popularity of these and subsequent 
pieces, complimentary or occasional, and the 
friendly solicitations of Lord Bath, Lord Lyttelton, 
and a new ally, the blue-stocking Mrs. Montagu, 
Mrs. Carter was persuaded to collect her more 
recent metrical efforts into a 12mo volume. This 
was published in 1762. It was dedicated, by 
invitation, to Lord Bath (it is said, indeed, that 
deferring to the author's dislike to laudation, he 
drafted the dedication himself !), and it was preceded 
by some high-pitched commendatory blank verse 
from the pen of Lyttelton, who had read the book in 
MS. Correct and academic, it no doubt showed much 
technical advance on its youthful predecessor, and 
the Monthly Reviewers, as in duty bound, promptly 
found in it both the philosophy of Epictetus and 
the felicity of Horace. Its prevalent note is of the 

1 An author's version of the poem then appeared, still 
anonymously, in the Gentleman? s Magazine for Dec. 1747. 



' THE LEARNED MRS. CARTER ' 111 

fashionable elegiac kind at which Goldsmith laughs 
gently in the novel he was then composing x ; and its 
exemplary sentiments must have gratified those to 
whom they were addressed. But they rouse, faint 
raptures now ; and cannot justly be held to rise 
to the superior altitudes claimed for them by the 
enthusiastic bard of Hagley, who was impressed by 
their high morality. It should, however, be borne 
in mind that prescription was at a premium ; and 
that those were days when such a poet as Mason 
was likened, in one breath, to Homer, Pindar, 
Virgil, Plato, and Sophocles 2 — comparisons which 
seem to indicate some passing derangement of the 
critical atmosphere. 3 Perhaps the most interesting 
biographical fact about these Poems on Several 
Occasions is that a visit of the little knot of friends 
above mentioned to Tunbridge Wells in 1761, when 
the volume was projected, was, apparently, the 
primary cause of that later excursion to Spa in 
1763 which, after the translation of Epictetus, con- 
stitutes the next and, indeed, the capital event 
in Mrs. Carter's history. It occupies an abnormal 
space in her Memoirs ; and no excuse is needed for 
some record of it here. 

When this took place, an expedition to the 
Continental health resort which has given its name 
to so many mineral springs was still what Dudley, 

1 ' I have wept so much at all sorts of elegies of late that 
without an enlivening glass [of gooseberry wine] I am sure 
this will overcome me.' (Vicar of Wakefield, chap, xvii.) 

2 Gentleman's Magazine, March 1752. 

3 It is but fair to add that Mrs. Carter's poems passed into 
several editions. The Ode to Wisdom was done into Dutch 
for Pastor Stinstra's version of Clarissa ; and, in 1796 some 
other of the pieces found an admiring French translator, the 
Count de Bedec. But her efforts have obtained no abiding 
home in modern anthologies. 



112 LATER ESSAYS 

Lord North, had called it in 1637, c a chargeable 
and inconvenient journey to sick bodies '. Save in 
exceptional conditions, it would have been imprac- 
ticable to an elderly gentlewoman of moderate 
means. The party was made up of Lord Bath and 
his chaplain, Dr. Douglas (Goldsmith's ' scourge of 
impostors and terror of quacks '), Mr. and Mrs. 
Montagu, Mrs. Carter, and several servants. They 
quitted Dover early on June 4, and reached Calais 
the same day, putting up at the famous Lion 
aV Argent, commemorated fourteen years before by 
Hogarth in his picture of The Boast Beef of Old 
England, and certainly familiar to Sterne in 1762. 
It was not the Dessin's of the later Sentimental 
Journey ; but Mrs. Carter found it a much better 
inn than any she had seen at Dover. In a day 
or two they went forward on their travels. Their 
cavalcade (for it was no less) consisted of my lord's 
coach, a vis-d-vis, a post-chaise, and a chasse-marine 
[chaise-marine ?] x with ten or twelve outriders. As 
Mrs. Carter's page, or special body-guard, Lord 
Bath had provided a lively ' little French boy with 
an English face '. He had also, apparently, a dash 
of English humour, since he was ' excessively enter- 
tained ' when the ladies from England were de- 
murely told by the nuns of Lille that they could 
only inspect the inside of the convent by staying 
there altogether (' Pas sans y rester, au moins '), 
a reply which reminds one of that given by the 
authorities at Madrid to John Howard when he 
proposed to explore the penetralia of the Spanish 
Inquisition. 

Mrs. Carter was at first much impressed by the 

1 Defined in The Stanford Dictionary as ' a light vehicle 
slung on springs ', and further described by Lady Morgan 
as i covered with a canvas awning '. 



1 THE LEARNED MRS. CARTER ' lis 

politesse, the empressement pour vous servir, which 
she experienced from our French neighbours ; and 
particularly from a vivacious perruquier at the inn, 
4 with a most magnificent queue \ who was called in 
to minister to the ' honours of her head '. But she 
had come from Dover with all the anti-Gallic pre- 
judices engendered by the wearisome Seven Years' 
War, and she speedily found a great deal that was 
less to her taste. With Hogarth — and almost in 
Hogarth's words — she was struck by the mixture 
of pride and poverty, of ' rags and dirt and finery ' 
— matters which were not materially modified by 
the occasional spectacle of clean towns, good roads, 
and well-cultivated fields. As a strict Church- 
woman, she was scandalized by the evidences of 
credulity and superstition. The tinsel and colifichets 
of the altar decorations ; the empty formality of 
the offices mumbled ignorantly by the worshippers ; 
the triviality and even profanity of the sacred 
pictures ; the manifestly mendacious stories of 
saints and miracles — all these things were natur- 
ally distasteful to the correspondent of an English 
bishop. At Lille, the grim fortifications prompt 
in the chronicler a pious gratitude that her own 
native land is a country ' guarded by the Ocean 
and by Liberty '. From Lille they fare to Ghent. 
At Courtrai they encounter a procession of the Host 
and see the people falling on their knees in the road 
as depicted by Hogarth. Thence they go on to 
Brussels, which they find extremely unattractive 
with its high houses, narrow streets, and dismal- 
looking canal. From Brussels their progress to 
Liege is diversified by sundry misadventures and 
breakdowns arising from the rope-harness and make- 
shift travelling tackle obtaining in the dominions of 
Maria-Theresa. Liege they vote detestable ; and 

I 



114 LATER ESSAYS 

its inhabitants ' of a disagreeable countenance \ 
At last, after a formidable twenty-one-mile drive 
of fifteen hours along a mountainous road, they 
reach their destination — the primitive Spa of 
1763. 

It was the middle of June. The Spa season was 
beginning, and the earliest visitors were arriving. 
These were mostly English and Germans, though 
there were also some French and Dutch. From 
Mrs. Carter's own nation she noted only Lord and 
Lady Robert Bertie ; and later, that fantastic 
personage, the Duke of Argyll's daughter, Lady 
Mary Coke. As a matter of convenience, Lord 
Bath's party were lodged in different buildings ; 
but they dined every day with his lordship. Their 
accommodation must have been rudimentary, as we 
hear of ' whitewashed walls, and floors the colour of 
dirt '. In spite of continuous rain, they at once 
proceeded to sample the waters of the two chief 
springs, the Pouhon and the remoter Geronstere, 
only to find them very similar to those they had 
left behind at Tunbridge Wells, even to producing 
the same ' confusion of head ' which had afflicted 
the excellent Mr. Samuel Richardson. They were 
promptly invited to dine with one of the first new- 
comers, the Prince-Bishop of Augsburg, an amiable 
and courtly ecclesiastic, whose appearance must 
have been anything but episcopal, since, after the 
fashion of Goldsmith (and the orchestra at Vaux- 
hall), he wore ' a blossom-coloured coat '. This, 
however, cannot have been uncommon, as another 
prelate (of twenty), Prince Clement of Saxony, who 
already held two bishoprics and was actually a 
candidate for a third, was attired in ' orange '. 
But then — to be sure — he was youngest son of the 
King of Poland ! The Prince-Bishop's entertain- 






' THE LEARNED MRS. CARTER ' 115 

merits were not stimulating, and terribly formal — 
4 more an honour than a pleasure ', Mrs. Carter calls 
them ; and the tedium was increased by the fact 
that all the attendants were persons of quality, and 
one must either choke with thirst or employ a Count 
or Baron to bring a glass of water. 

This rigorous routine was necessarily highly dis- 
concerting to the quiet recluse of the Kentish 
seaport, who would obviously have preferred the 
conversational sans-gene of a literary breakfast to 
all the decorations in the Almanack de Gotha. 
Luckily, from most of the functions and assemblies 
she was excused by her constitutional headaches, 
and from others, by the absence of the hoop de 
rigueur with which she had not come provided. For 
the community of water-drinkers, they were friendly 
and sociable enough ; but as mixed as at the Bath 
Pump Room. In the walks of the Geronstere, the 
variety of costume was exceedingly amusing. 
« Priests and Hussars, Beaux and Hermits, Nuns 
and fine ladies, stars and crosses, cowls and ribbons, 
all blended together in the most lively and pic- 
turesque manner imaginable.' x Mrs. Montagu 
called the place ' The Seven Dials of Europe '— 
which sounds more brilliant than it is. Every one 
spoke French, including the Germans, who, indeed, 
following the lead of the illustrious Philosopher of 
Sans-Souci, professed to prefer that tongue to their 
own mellifluous medium. 2 It is depressing to learn 
that Mrs. Carter seems, on the whole, to have liked 

1 Memoirs, 1825, i. 306. 

2 Mrs. Carter gives an extraordinary illustration of this. 
She met a German lady who was familiar with Gessner's 
Death of Abel, but only in a French version. When 
Mrs. Carter expressed surprise, the lady explained that she 
did not understand her own language well enough to read 
the original. (Ibid., p. 322.) 

/ 12 



116 LATER ESSAYS 

the Teutons better than the other nationalities ; 
and although she laughed at their preposterously 
stiff state-costume, which reminded her of ' King 
Pharaoh's court in a puppet-show ', she found them 
unaffected and agreeable, and her highest com- 
mendations are reserved for those whom Hannah 
More afterwards discovered to be ' desolating Huns '. 
Especially was she attracted by some of their ' emi- 
nences ' ; and in particular, to that distinguished 
soldier, Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of 
Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel, who afterwards married 
George Ill's sister, Princess Augusta, and thus 
became the father of the ill-fated Caroline, whose 
tragedy it was to endure the tender mercies of the 
so-called 4 First Gentleman in Europe '. Known at 
this date as the Hereditary Prince of Brunswick, 
the Duke was a young man of eight and twenty ; 
and Mrs. Carter (a staunch Hanoverian) was greatly 
impressed by his natural politeness, good sense, and 
' culture ' (old style !). She also discovered an ador- 
able chanoinesse — she appears to have had a taste 
for chanoinesses, with their blue ribbons and garnet 
crosses — whose name was Mme de Blum, with 
whom she struck up a lasting friendship. 

But one may make too much of an episode, even 
though it should chance to be the solitary important 
event in an otherwise colourless career. In August 
the Spa visit, with its tiresome balls and its assem- 
blies, its endless buckram and bowing, its three- 
penny whist and penny quadrille (to say nothing 
of heavier stakes), came to an end ; and the party 
set out by the Rhine and Holland to return to 
England. Upon their further impressions de voyage 
it is unnecessary to linger. That they should have 
visited the Tomb of Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle, 
the Church of the Ursulines at Cologne, and the 



' THE LEARNED MRS. CARTER ' 117 

Prince of Orange's House in the Wood at The Hague, 
woes without saying, for these are the standing 
dishes of Baedeker and Murray. But it illustrates 
the practical side of Mrs. Carter's character that she 
shows no bibliographical enthusiasm for Mr. Fagel's 
famous library at the last-named town. ' I have no 
idea of merely reading the titles of books, and 
bein* convinced they are good editions and well 
bound.' ' I have no great pleasure ', she says again, 
' in the mere sight of books unless one can sit down 
quietly and read them.' x On September 19 they 
left Calais. At Dover, next day, Mrs. Carter bade 
farewell to her friends, and set off in a post-chaise 
for Deal, nothing loath to return to her old habit 
of life. It may, indeed, be questioned whether her 
tour into foreign parts really effected much beyond 
enlarging her experience. The rain had been per- 
petual ; the fatigue of travel excessive ; she had 
suffered much from inability to take her accustomed 
walking exercise, and her constitutional ailments 
had often debarred her from sharing in the expedi- 
tions and entertainments which engrossed her com- 
panions. 4 Ever since I left England ', she tells 
Mrs. Vesey from The Hague, ' my head has been at 
least equally bad, and my nerves worse than lor 
some years : so far were the Spa waters from doing 
them any good.' 2 Such things must have sorely 
tried both her placid temper and her stoic serenity ; 
and, in these respects, she was superficially more 
unfortunate than her friends. ' My Lord Bath and 
Mrs. Montagu are surprisingly the better for their 
excursion, indeed they are much the youngest and 
healthiest of our whole party.' 2 This, as regards 
Lord Bath, is obviously playful, since he was eighty- 

i Memoirs, i. 344, 358. 2 Ibid., p. 362. 



118 LATER ESSAYS 

one, and died in the following year. As a matter 
of fact, Mrs. Carter, who had still forty-four years 
before her, survived them both. She was therefore 
right in speaking of her disabilities as ' good long- 
lived distempers '. But though, except in 1782, 
she never again went abroad, the story of her 
Continental tour was one to which she was accus- 
tomed in after days to refer with peculiar satisfac- 
tion, and she was untiring in recalling its moving 
accidents. 

At this point the candid chronicler must confess 
that Mrs. Carter's never very vive odyssee grows 
singularly barren ; and although she lived into the 
nineteenth century, only brief space is required for 
the remainder of the ' life that has no story '. With 
the money obtained for her translation, she had 
bought certain tenements at Deal, which, during 
her absence on the Continent, had been consolidated 
into the house where henceforth she lived. It is 
later described as an ivy-clad building, situated 
delightfully at the northern extremity of the town, 
and commanding a view both of the country and 
the sea. The rest of the family were now out in 
the world. She let the house to her father ; and 
here for several years they lived quietly. Each had 
his or her separate apartment and library ; and 
though they saw each other rarely except at meals, 
and generally conversed in Latin, the arrangement 
seems to have worked admirably. For, in spite of 
the erudition which she sedulously nourished, on 
the old lines, 1 Mrs. Carter was unremitting in her 

1 Being a rigorous early riser, she generally began before 
breakfast with Bible-reading, a sermon by Clarke or another, 
and some Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. After breakfast, she 
read a part of every language with which she was acquainted, 
4 so that she never allowed herself to forget what she had 



4 THE LEARNED MRS. CARTER ' 119 

humbler domestic duties ; and to the friends who 
exhorted her to undertake fresh versions from the 
4 Antients ', would placidly reply that she had ' a 
dozen shirts to make '. This very matter-of-fact 
side of her character was recognized by Johnson. 
4 My old friend, Mrs. Carter,' said he, 4 could make 
a pudding as well as translate Epictetus from the 
Greek, and work a handkerchief as well as compose 
a poem ' ; 1 and this was a condition of things 
in which she uncomplainingly acquiesced until, in 
1774, Dr. Carter died. 

There were, not less, even during this time, 
occasional 4 solutions of continuity '. Every winter 
she migrated for some weeks to London. Many of 
her numerous admirers would gladly have received 
her as a guest. But she preferred to take lodgings 
with her maid in Clarges Street, Piccadilly, to which 
she regularly returned. 4 She kept no table in 
London . . . nor ever dined at home but when she 
was so ill as to be unable to go out. The chairs or 
carriages of her friends always brought her to 
dinner, and carried her back at ten o'clock at 
latest.' 2 Her periodical journeys from Deal, failing 
a brother-in-law's carriage, were generally made by 
the common stage, which, though it sometimes 
acquainted her with strange fellow passengers, never 
exposed her to any misadventures of the road, 
beyond being 4 jolted black and blue '. But this, 
even as an octogenarian, she patiently continued 
to endure. Her practice was to set out from Deal 
by moonlight at 8 p.m., and she usually reached 

once known.' It is further recorded that, to avoid being 
tired, she hardly ever worked for more than half an hour at 
a time. (Memoirs, 1825, i. 139-40.) 

1 Hill's Johnsonian Miscellanies, 1897, ii. 11. 

* Memoirs, 1825, i. 242. 



120 LATER ESSAYS 

Glarges Street at 11 a.m. next day, having break- 
fasted at Dartford. This she thought preferable to 
4 drawling through two days and sleeping on the 
road ' ; and Miss Gaussen relates that, in 1801, four 
years before her death, she dined at Lord Cre- 
morne's on the very evening of her arrival in 
town. 

As a resident at Deal she was highly respected by 
the townsfolk, who regarded her with great venera- 
tion as a person of almost superhuman attainments, 
especially in meteorology ; and she seems to have 
identified herself thoroughly with all their local 
hopes and fears, without insisting too strongly on 
her intellectual superiority. In fact, in all matters 
regarding herself, she was transparently modest and 
unobtrusive. But, in London, in the fitting environ- 
ment of the congenial bas-bleu atmosphere — at Mrs. 
Montagu's great mansion in Portman Square, or 
Mrs. Vesey's Tuesdays — at Lady Herries's in St. 
James's Square or Mrs. Hunter's in Leicester Fields 
— she was naturally in what she herself would have 
described as son assiette. As may be gathered from 
her verbal portrait at the beginning of this paper, 
she must have been an accomplished talker of 
the best type, promoting without dominating the 
1 stream of conversation ', sympathetically atten- 
tive, responsive, and informing. She dealt, one 
would imagine, little with people, but much with 
books and things — ' things that mattered ' in par- 
ticular. ' Her talk was all instruction ' — says Fanny 
Burney in 1784. 1 She spoke frankly about writers 
of whom she disapproved — Voltaire, Rousseau, 
Hume, for example — but without heat or bitterness. 
She was even indulgent to those frailties which 
might be ascribed to variable health, as in the case 
1 Diary, 1904, ii. 24C. 



4 THE LEARNED MRS. CARTER ' 121 

of Pope and Johnson ; and she was more just to 
Fielding's powers than was Gray. She respected 
Richardson ; but found his prolixity tiresome, 
besides doubting his knowledge of male humanity ; 
and she freely criticized the weak spots in Gold- 
smith's personages when they seemed more invented 
than observed. Her favourite authors, as might be 
anticipated, were of her own sex ; and she was 
a warm adherent of Mrs. Radcliffe, Miss Burney, 
and Miss Joanna Baillie. Of Mrs. Montagu's Essay 
on Shakespeare she was, of course, appreciative ; 
but she regretted her friend had not exerted her 
powers on some ' work of more general utility '. 
The impression produced by her ' scattered sapience ' 
is that she must have been an exceedingly straight- 
forward, tolerant, and well-equipped critic ; and 
that Johnson was right when he said, after dining 
at Mrs. Garrick's with Elizabeth Carter, Fanny 
Burney, and Hannah More, that i three such women 
were not to be found \ x It is true, after his fashion, 
he presently discounted his heroics by adding 
Mrs. Lenox to the trio as ' superior to them all ', 
and by commending Mrs. Montagu's conversation 
as being ' always impregnated ' with meaning. In 
the blue-stocking Salon of those days you met 
everybody of any intellectual standing. Burke and 
Johnson, Reynolds and Garrick, Lyttelton and 
Beattie, Horace Walpole and Lord Monboddo — 
these, with many another, were all to be seen and 
listened to for nothing. It was not, as sometimes 
supposed, an exclusive Spouters' Club or a Mutual 
Admiration Society, but a thoroughly informal 
gathering, easy of access to any person of character, 
and its rules were unconventional. There was 
neither the temptation of cards nor the solace of 
Hill's Boswell, 1887, iv. 275. 



122 LATER ESSAYS 

supper ; neither the hubbub of a ' Hurricane ' nor 
the crowd of a ' Rout '. But you heard the best 
4 impregnated ' conversation in the world by the best 
talkers. And one of the best talkers was undoubtedly 
Elizabeth Carter. 

There is little else to tell, biographically, of our 
4 learned ' lady. The deaths of Archbishop Seeker, 
Miss Talbot, and Lord Lyttelton had already pre- 
ceded the death of her father ; and after this nad 
happened, she gradually lost other members of her 
more intimate circle. Mrs. Vesey followed Dr. 
Carter in 1791, and Mrs. Montagu "in 1801. With 
the two latter Mrs. Carter maintained a copious 
correspondence which has all the more solid charac- 
teristics attached to her spoken words. Literature 
she practically abandoned, only adding a few poems 
to her collection of 1762, and editing Miss Talbot's 
remains. She seems, indeed, to have had slender 
literary ambition ; or rather, her bias was more in 
the direction of acquiring than diffusing. To employ 
Mr. Gladstone's figure, her imports exceeded her 
exports. She was, besides, too late for the new 
novel as practised by the author of Evelina ; and 
play-writing was probably against her principles ; 
although her position as a social spectator should 
have furnished her with material for either field. 
And if she was not stirred by the aspirations of 
literature, neither was she forced to them by 
necessity. The profits of her translation, together 
with an opportune legacy from a London relative, 
and pensions from the Pulteney family and Mrs. 
Montagu, fully sufficed for her modest charities and 
her moderate wants ; and her posthumous works 
consist solely of Biblical studies. She was never 
married. One of the last incidents of her life was 
her introduction by Lady Cremorne to Queen 



4 THE LEARNED MRS. CARTER ' 123 

Charlotte, who received her with great affability. 
Her honourable and contented life was prolonged 
until February 1806, when she died in her Clarges 
Street lodgings on her final visit to town. She lies 
in the Grosvenor Chapel burial-ground, where her 
epitaph describes her as being ' a ladjr as much 
distinguished for piety and virtue, as for deep 
learning, and extensive knowledge '. 



THE ABBE EDGEWORTH 

Biography is deservedly a popular form of litera- 
ture. Yet it has its limitations ; and the writer 
who light-heartedly sets out upon his task, fore- 
seeing only a pleasant progress through a smiling 
landscape, runs the risk of being wofully disap- 
pointed. He must be prepared for long and dusty 
by-ways, stretches of unexpected sterility, bleak 
corners where only a Carlyle could built a Craigen- 
puttock. Take, for instance, the case of John 
Howard, already discussed in these pages. He had 
completed many apparently infructuous years 
before he began the period of his fevered philan- 
thropic activities. With ' the learned Mrs. Carter ' — 
of whom there has also been discourse— the position 
was reversed. Her mission was accomplished in 
the first half of her life, and of her protracted later 
career there is nothing absorbing to record. Such 
vacant intervals may, of course, be often accounted 
for by the inevitable silences of unconscious proba- 
tion, or the not-unwelcome repose of achieved 
endeavour. But they must be faced by the life- 
maker ; and unless, with Swift's Afric geographers, 
he can 

o'er unhabitable downs 
Place elephants for want of towns, 

he will do well to confess his disabilities, and say 
frankly that there is nothing to be said. 

These considerations apply generally to many of 
the dramatis personae in the great tragedy of the 
French Revolution, and they are particularly 
applicable to the Irish ecclesiastic whose name 



THE ABBE EDGEWORTH 125 

figures at the head of this essay. The Abbe Edge 
vfrth^-or, as he was called in France, the Abbe 
Edgeworth de Firmont i-had, like Howard, reached 
Lf mature age of four-and-forty before his Me 
becomes biographically attracts. That hfe ^ has 
of late vears, been written at large, 2 but its salient 
features 7 are undoubtedly his relations with the 
royal family of France and his presence on the 
scaHold of Louis XVI. Physically frail, but mor- 
aUy courageous, unambitious, and ^btrusive-the 
story of his colourless doings presents little menior- 
abkJsave his connexion with the Bourbons, and to 
this mainly we propose to confine our piesent 

ln B U omin 1745 at Edgeworthstown, a place founded 
by the Edgeworth family in the sixteenth century 
Henry Essex Edgeworth was the second son of 
K Robert Edgeworth, Protestant Rec *or of 
Edgeworthstown, who married a grand-daughter 
of Archbishop Ussher of the Chronology, by whom 
he had four children-Robert, Henry aforesaid, 
Ussher and a daughter, Betty. In 1748, when 
i From 'Firmount', the family property, three miles 
north of Edgeworthstown in Co. Longford, _ Ire land. 

'The Abbi Edgeworth and his Friends, byMiss Violette M. 
Montaou (1918). We have availed ourselves of such of the 
5.Z o g f Ed<4worth's career, recorded in this volume, as 
f I °,,SIr scone • but we have also drawn freely on 
tlTva^aWe collection' of Beeits original and Documents 
omJels brought together by the Marquis de Beaucourt for 
X Sodete d'Histoire Contemporame under the -.t tie ^of 
fwhrfM el nemiers Moments de Louis XVI, 2 vols, ubimj- 
£h?£ include thlvevy interesting account written down m 
ml *bj Bertrand de Moleville afler ^peated co vers atmns 

Ussher Edgeworth. 



126 LATER ESSAYS 

Henry was three years old, Edgeworth pere, to the 
great dissatisfaction of his Protestant relatives, 
became a Roman Catholic ; and, in consequence, 
migrated to Toulouse, leaving only his youngest 
son, Ussher, behind him in Ireland. At Toulouse 
Robert and Henry were educated, and here the 
future Abbe made a lifelong friend of a student 
compatriot, John Moylan, afterwards Roman 
Catholic Bishop of Cork. By Moylan's advice, 
Henry Edgeworth passed to Paris, where, from the 
College of the Trente-Trois, he attended lectures 
at the Sorbonne and the College de Navarre. When 
his education was finished he took orders, and went 
into residence at the Seminaire des Missions etran- 
geres in the Rue du Bac, an institution for the educa- 
tion of Roman Catholic missionaries which dated 
from 1663. His first intention was the mission- 
field ; but from this he was dissuaded ; and thence- 
forth confined himself to his work in Paris, which 
lay chiefly among the English and Irish poor in 
his neighbourhood. 

In 1766 his friend Moylan moved from Toulouse 
to Ireland. Moylan strove vainly to induce Edge- 
worth to accompany him, but with long residence 
in France the latter had lost touch with his native 
land ; and although Moylan went as far as to ask 
the Pope's permission to carry his fellow student 
back with him, he could not induce him to undertake 
the duties of an Irish rural priest. Three years 
later, in 1769, the elder Edgeworth died ; and his 
widow, with her daughter Betty and her sons 
Robert and Ussher — the second of whom had by 
this date joined the family in France — went back 
to Ireland. But her Protestant relatives proved 
so unfriendly that, promptly selling her property, 
she returned to France with her daughter. They 



THE ABBfi EDGEWORTH 127 

took up their abode with the Franciscan nuns in 
the Couvent des Recollets, not far from the Rue 
du Bac, and, consequently, in convenient proximity 
to the Abbe. 

And here comes one of those seemingly barren 
biographical spaces to which reference has been 
made. From 1766 to 1789 the Abbe, like Gold- 
smith's village preacher, ' more skill'd to raise 
the wretched than to rise ' — contented himself with 
his modest ministerial duties. For this he is his 
own authority. Writing to Moylan in July 1788, 
twenty-two years after the latter had left France, 
he says expressly that his position was precisely 
the same as it had been of old. Living in the same 
room in the same house, coming home at the same 
hours, he knew nobody whose life had changed 
less than his had done — an admission which should 
certainly have entitled him to all the advantages 
involved in Pascal's quietist doctrine that tout le 
malheur des hommes vient de ne sgavoir pas se tenir 
en repos dans une chambre. Opportunities of 
advancement had not been lacking ; but his health 
was poor, and more than one illness fully justi- 
fied him in speaking of his feeble constitution. 
Self-seeking, moreover, was foreign to his unpre- 
tentious disposition. Of public matters his letter 
says nothing ; but there is a warning under-note 
in his closing lines. Though everything seemed quiet, 
he was fully aware that the conflict had begun, and 
that the issue was uncertain. 

Twelve months later, on July 14, 1789, the taking 
of the Bastille inaugurated the atrocities which 
only terminated with the Terror. The nobility 
and the clergy were fleeing the country, and the 
King's second brother, the Count d'Artois, had 
already taken his inglorious departure. At this 



128 LATER ESSAYS 

juncture Edgeworth received a pressing invitation 
from his aunt, Miss Ussher of Galway (Mrs. Edge- 
worth's sister and a Roman Catholic), to come to 
Ireland as her chaplain. To this, however, as to 
another urgent appeal from his brothers, two years 
later, he turned a deaf ear. As already stated, he, 
rightly or wrongly, regarded himself as disqualified 
for service in Ireland, and held that his duty and 
destiny lay in France. There were, possibly, other 
reasons which led him to brave the storm. He was, 
naturally, not attracted to his Protestant relatives ; 
nor, looking to their recent experiences, were his 
mother and sister, who wished to be near him at 
Paris. And in addition to his little flock, who were 
devoted to their pastor, he had become father- 
confessor to one or two court ladies, by whom he 
was held in high esteem. This it was that directly 
led to his connexion with the royal family of France. 
The sister of Louis XVI, the pious and amiable 
Princess Elizabeth, had lost her confessor, the Abbe 
Madier, who had gone to Italy with the King's 
aunts, Mesdames Adelaide and Victoire. For 
a substitute the Princess applied to the Seminaire 
in the Rue du Bac, and, with the ready acquiescence 
of his clerical superior, Edgeworth was at once 
nominated to the post. 

The Princess was delighted with her new spiritual 
guide. She had been assured that he was 4 neither 
too severe nor too lenient '. She is ' quite content 
with him ', she writes in March 1791. He ' possesses 
a profound knowledge of human nature '. Later on 
she speaks of him as 4 a well-educated, broad- 
minded, gentle but firm director, who already 
knows me better than I know~myself and will allow 
no backsliding '. In August of the same year, 
after the ill-planned and ill-fated flight to Varennes, 



THE ABBfi EDGEWORTH 129 

she is still of the same camion. ' If I do not make 
any progress I shall know who is to blame,' she says. 
■ I have just had a long conversation with the Abbe,' 
in whom, beyond the qualities already enumerated, 
she discovers ' an engaging manner which invites 
confidence ' and ' a very lovable disposition, which 
makes one long to imitate him '. She cannot look 
forward to the day when they must part — a remark 
implying that, as Miss Montagu suggests, notwith- 
standing the Varennes fiasco, she was still cherishing 
the vain hope of escaping from France. She trusts, 
however, ' that Providence, who has never aban- 
doned me, will temper the wind to the shorn lamb '.* 

It would have been interesting to contrast this 
' roughly drawn ' portrait, as its writer calls it, with 
some corresponding account on the Abbe's part of 
his illustrious penitent. This, however, is not 
forthcoming. From the flight to Varennes to the 
incarceration of the royal family in the Tuileries, 
either from caution or necessity, Edgeworth's 
letters are few and far between. But during their 
residence in the Tuileries he seems to have enjoyed 
an exceptional immunity from molestation. He 
was, indeed, cautioned to be careful in visiting the 
palace, but he went twice or thrice a week fearlessly 
in and out without the slightest attempt at secrecy 
or disguise — a temerity at which he himself was 
afterwards astonished, and could only attribute 
it to his ignorance of the risk he ran. As a matter 
of fact, he was literally taking his life in his hand. 

On Monday, August 13, 1792, the King, his wife, 

1 Although the royal family of France were familiar with 
translations of the English Classics, it is not necessary to 
suppose that the princess was quoting from Sterne's Maria 
ofMoulines. She had probably in mind Henri Estienne of 
the Premices, 1594. 

/ K 



130 LATER ESSAYS 

his sister, and his son and daughter entered the 
Temple as prisoners ; and in the same month the 
Abbe's retreat in the Rue du Bac was suddenly 
subjected to a nocturnal domiciliary visit, of which he 
personally does not seem to have been the direct 
object. But his papers were hastily examined — a 
course highly critical, as he had many compromising 
letters, though they either escaped notice or were 
unintelligible to their ignorant inquisitors. One of 
his friends in the same building was not equally 
fortunate. A suspicious missive from Germany 
having been found in his possession, he was promptly 
carried to prison, where in brief space he was 
massacred by the Septembriseurs. This inroad 
made it clear that the Rue du Bac was no longer an 
asylum, and the Abbe set about the wholesale 
destruction of his records. Before his task was 
completed he was again invaded in force. Some 
hundred revolutionists appeared about midday and 
began a systematic, but fruitless, search for docu- 
ments, though he was afterwards dismayed to find 
that they had actually handled, and thrown aside 
as negligible, an overlooked letter from the Count 
de Provence, who had quitted France on the night 
of Varennes. A later rumour, that the mob were 
meditating an attack on the Seminaire itself, left 
its inmates no choice but flight ; and Edgeworth, 
in disguise, by back streets and devious ways, 
succeeded in reaching the Recollets, where, favoured 
by circumstances, he lay for several weeks in hiding. 
With the massacres of September 1792 we come 
within measurable distance of the most important 
event in Edgeworth 's life — namely, his final minis- 
trations to Louis XVI, whose execution took place 
in January 1793. After leaving the Recollets the 
Abbe retired to Choisy-le-Roi, three leagues south 



THE ABBfi EDGEWORTH 131 

of Paris, on the left bank of the Seine. Here, under 
the name of Edgeworth, he passed successfully for 
a harmless and benevolent Englishman in reduced 
circumstances ; but it is quite clear that he still 
communicated with Madame Elizabeth. 1 While at 
Choisy, shortly before Christmas, he received a 
mandate from the Archbishop of Paris, Mgr de 
Juigne, then an emigrS, to take charge of the dio- 
cese during his absence. He was preparing to 
enter upon this vicarious and truly hazardous office 
when he was suddenly summoned to an interview 
with the venerable Lamoignon de Malesherbes, the 
King's counsel, hitherto unknown to him, who 
placed in his hands a letter from Louis XVI begging 
him, should the sentence of death be carried into 
effect, to give him his assistance in his last hours — 
a proposal to which Edgeworth of course assented. 
After some days' delay, on Sunday, January 20, 
at about four o'clock in the afternoon, Edgeworth 
received a peremptory order to attend before the 
Executive Council. Henceforth the story rests 
mainly on the first-hand narratives of Clery, the 
King's valet at the Temple, 2 and that of Edgeworth 
himself, as written down for the benefit of his 
brother Ussher. 3 The Abbe was at once taken to 
the Tuileries, where the Council were in session. 
He found them in consternation. They eagerly 
clustered about him ; and Garat, the Minister of 

1 Sneyd Edgeworth's Memoirs, 1815, pp. 112, 118. 

2 Journal, dbc., de Clery, London, 1798. 

3 There are versions of this in Sneyd Edgeworth's Memoirs 
(1815) in French and English ; and there is a transcript of 
the French version by the Marquis de Sy in the MSS. Depart- 
ment of the British Museum to which it was presented in 
1814. Our summary of this detailed document is based on 
Clery, Edgeworth, Beaucourt, and Moleville, with some 
explanatory additions from other sources. 

/ K 2 



132 LATER ESSAYS 

Justice and, for the time being, President of the 
Council, forthwith inquired whether he was prepared 
to undertake what was demanded of him. Edge- 
worth answered that as the King had desired it, 
and mentioned him by name, it was his duty to 
comply. ThereujDon Garat carried him off to the 
Temple. Beyond a few conventionally compassion- 
ate words from the Minister, to which the Abbe was 
discreet enough not to respond, the journey was 
completed in silence. Edgeworth was in plain 
clothes, which he was directed to retain. Arrived 
at their destination, they were stopped at the barrier 
separating the court from the garden, and subjected 
to a rigorous preliminary inspection from which the 
Minister himself was not exempted. They then 
crossed the garden leading to the Tower (strictly 
Towers) of the Temple, where the prisoners were 
confined. After this, with much formidable un- 
bolting and unbarring, they were admitted at the 
little, low and narrow door shown in Clery's frontis- 
piece, and ushered into a room crowded with the 
Commissaries specially charged with the custody of 
the captives. Garat read them his instructions, 
with the result that he was allowed to go up to the 
King, then located on the second floor of the greater 
Tower, to which he had been transferred in Septem- 
ber 1792. Meanwhile, Edgeworth was left behind, 
opportunity being taken for searching him carefully 
from head to foot, to make sure that he had neither 
arms nor poison upon him. By the time this was 
effected, a message was received that Louis would 
see his confessor, who was thereupon conducted 
up the dark and winding turret staircase, garnished 
at intervals by wickets with ribald and half-drunken 
sentries, into the King's presence. 

He found Louis standing in the centre of a group 




s 

O co d 



THE ABBE EDGEWORTH 135 

including Garat and several members of the Com- 
mune. He was calm, dignified, and even gracious — 
ostensibly much less perturbed than those about 
him. On Edgeworth's arrival he motioned them 
away, closing the door after them himself. The 
Abbe, overcome with emotion, fell at his feet ; and 
Louis, long unaccustomed to manifestations of loy- 
alty, was visibly affected. He helped Edgeworth 
to rise, and took him through his bedroom to the 
little unwarmed and scantily furnished turret-closet 
to which it led, where they were less likely to be 
overheard. Despite the awful prospects of the 
morrow, he was humanly eager for news from the 
outer world. His first act, however, pending the 
arrival of his family from the third story — per- 
mission for which had been conceded by the Exe- 
cutive Council — was to read his well-known will, 
drawn up in the preceding December, while he was 
still in doubt whether he would be allowed the 
services of a priest. He read it, not only once, but 
twice, in a firm voice, faltering only at the references 
to his family, but unshaken at mention of his own 
misfortunes. He asked subsequently for news as 
to the condition of the clergy, and especially of 
his own spiritual pastor, the Archbishop of Paris. 
A chance allusion to the Duke of Orleans led him 
to speak of that disloyal relative ; but he did so 
more in sorrow than in anger, declaring that he 
would not change places with him. This tete-a-tete 
was interrupted by the appearance of a Commissary 
announcing the advent of the royal family to take 
that final farewell which (pictorially) has been so 
much represented — and misrepresented. 

The King at once started off, leaving Edgeworth 
by himself in the turret-closet. The interview took 
place in the contracted dining-room adjoining the 



136 LATER ESSAYS 

antechamber ; and during a quarter of an hour the 
hysterical shrieks of the women were so piercing 
that they must have been audible through the 
walls of the tower, but by and by they subsided 
into exhausted undertones ; and when the allotted 
period had expired, and the last heart-rending 
adieux had followed in the antechamber, the King 
returned to his confessor terribly agitated. Clery 
persuaded him to eat some supper, which was a 
matter of a few minutes ; and Edgeworth then 
proposed that arrangements should be made for 
administering the Holy Communion. The King 
hesitated, fearing to compromise his companion ; 
but as the Abbe persisted, he allowed him to en- 
deavour to obtain permission from the authorities 
on the spot. This was at first refused, but Edge- 
worth's personality, or pertinacity, eventually sur- 
mounted every objection ; and on his written appli- 
cation, coupled with the express condition that 
the ceremony should be over by seven o'clock on 
the morrow at the latest, since at eight the King 
must start for the place of execution, the Commis- 
saries consented to make the needful preparations. 
It was past ten in the evening when Edgeworth 
returned to the King with this intelligence, which 
was received with the utmost satisfaction. They 
remained conversing together far into the night, 
by which time the King showed signs of fatigue, 
and the Abbe suggested that he should take some 
rest. He complied on the understanding that Edge- 
worth would do likewise, and Edgeworth there- 
fore retired into Clery's room, the fourth room 
on "the floor, next to that of Louis. Utterly un- 
nerved himself, he presently heard the King com- 
posedly giving Clery his orders for the morrow. 
After this his Majesty slept until five, when he got 



THE ABBfi EDGEWORTH 137 

up and talked to Edgeworth for an hour. On 
leaving him, the Abbe found that the Commissaries 
had, with Clery's aid, 1 scrupulously and, indeed, 
liberally fulfilled their part of the compact. An 
altar had been extemporized in the King's bedroom, 
furnished with vestments and vessels borrowed from 
the neighbouring chapel of the old Couvent des 
Capucins du Marais. 2 The King then heard Mass 
and communicated. Left for a short space to finish 
his prayers, Edgeworth later found him seated by 
the defective stove vainly endeavouring to warm 
himself, but mentally at ease. 

By this time day was dawning, and drums were 
beating the geiierale all over Paris, freezing the blood 
in Edgeworth's veins. The King heard them un- 
concerned, only saying quietly, 4 Apparently the 
national guards are beginning to assemble '. Pieces 
of artillery were rumbling to and fro, taking up 
the stations allotted to them in Santerre's pro- 
gramme. Outside the Tower the sound of officers' 
voices and the trampling of horses' hoofs showed 
that detachments of cavalry were filling the court- 
yard. The King had hoped to see his wife once 
more, and had, indeed, promised her to do so ; 
but Edgeworth now urgently advised him not to 
expose her to an ordeal beyond her strength. ' You 
are right, sir,' he replied, i it would give her 
her death-blow ; it is better for me to deprive 
myself of this sad consolation, and to let her live 
on hope for a few moments longer.' From seven 
till eight they remained in the closet, the King 
himself replying to the numerous interrupters, 
anxious to assure themselves of his safe-keeping 
there. This he did with uniform restraint and 
patience, simply remarking to Edgeworth when 
1 Clery, p. 229. 2 Ibid., p. 226. 



138 LATER ESSAYS 

one of them was more than usually obnoxious : 
4 See how these people treat me ! ' Referring, on 
another occasion, to their evident fear that he would 
make away with himself, he added : ' No ! since 
it must be, I shall know how to die ! ' 

At length the final summons came ; and Santerre, 
accompanied by seven or eight municipal officers 
and ten soldiers, pressed into the bedroom. The 
King at once came out of his closet and, addressing 
Santerre, said to him, ' You are come for me ? ' 
4 Yes,' was the answer. The King desired him to 
wait a minute, and went back to Edgeworth for 
his blessing and prayers. Presently he returned, 
followed by the Abbe. Seeing his visitors wore their 
hats, he called for his own, which Clery, in tears, 
immediately brought to him. He had in his hand 
his will, which he presented to a municipal officer, 
Jacques Roux, who was a little in advance of the 
rest, asking him to give it to the Queen — to his 
wife. Roux replied : ' It is no business of mine. 
I am here to conduct you to the scaffold ?. x The 
King, acquiescing, then presented it to another 
municipal officer stationed permanently at the 
Temple, begging him to deliver it to the Queen, 
adding that he might read it, as there were things 
in it that he wished made known to the Commune. 
His Majesty subsequently addressed a few part- 
ing injunctions concerning Clery to the municipal 
officers. As no one replied, he looked at Santerre 
and said, ' Let us go '. 2 

These were the last words he uttered in his Temple 
apartments. At the top of the stairs, in descending, 

1 Cf. Roux in Beaucourt, ii. 309 ; Clery, pp. 237-8. 

2 ' Marchons,' says Edgeworth ; ' Partons,' says Clery ; 
and this latter, Dallas, his first English translator, renders 
' Lead on ' — which is quite in the vein of Mr. Vincent 
Crummies. 



THE ABBE EDGEWORTH 139 

he encountered Mathey, the concierge of the Tower, 
to whom, on the preceding Saturday, provoked by 
the man's unbearable insolence, he had spoken 
sharply. For this he now asked his pardon, bidding 
him kindly not to take it ill. Mathey, however, 
made no answer, and even affected to hold back 
from the King while he was speaking. 1 Louis then 
left the Tower on foot, turning round more than 
once in his progress to look at the gloomy structure 
which for five weary months had been his prison, 
and which still retained within its walls all that he 
held most dear. He was manifestly much affected, 
and struggling hard to collect his energies. At the 
exit gate of the Temple a closed carriage was waiting 
with two gendarmes. They opened the door, and 
entered the vehicle with the King and his com- 
panion, who sat by his side. Edgeworth had been 
told privately on the previous day that an effort 
would be made to rescue his Majesty at the scaffold. 
He had also heard (though this must have been after 
the event) that the gendarmes had orders to 
assassinate the King on the least indication of any 
popular movement in his favour. This he hesitated 
to believe ; 2 and, in any case, what was projected 
by the too sanguine conspirators was rendered 
futile by the far-reaching precautions of the vigilant 
Santerre. During the journey to the Place de la 
Revolution (late Place Louis XV), which lasted 
about two hours, the King, not being able to 
converse with the Abbe in the presence of the guards, 
was at first silent. The Abbe handed to him the 
only book he had with him, his breviary, indicating 
psalms proper to the occasion, which they repeated 
alternately. A troop of mounted gendarmes led 

1 Clery, p. 239. 
But apparently it was true. (Beaucourt, i. 331.) 



140 LATER ESSAYS 

the van of the cortege ; Santerre and the Mayor 
of Paris (Chambon) followed with the municipal 
officers. Next came three pieces of heavy ordnance, 
the gunners of which had their matches lit ; and then 
the carriage. In front of the horses — according to 
Edgeworth — were stationed drummers, whose func- 
tion it was to drown summarily any inopportune 
demonstrations. 

By decree of the National Convention, the guillo- 
tine had been erected in the centre of the square, 
on a site facing the entrance to the Tuileries, be- 
tween the avenue leading to the Champs Elysees 
and the pedestal occupied up to August 1792 by 
that butt of the epigrammatists, Bouchardon's 
bronze equestrian statue of his Majesty's grand- 
father. Here, shortly after ten, the carriage stopped 
in the space which had been cleared about the 
scaffold. This space was encircled by cannon ; and 
beyond, as far as the eye could reach, the great 
enclosure was occupied with a multitude of armed 
spectators. The King whispered to his companion, 
; We have arrived, unless I am mistaken '. An 
executioner came to open the door, and the gen- 
darmes prepared to alight ; but the King stopped 
them, saying in an authoritative tone, ' Messieurs, 
I commend this gentleman to you ; take care that 
he receives no insult after my death. I charge you 
to look to this matter ! '< — an injunction to which 
no reply was at first vouchsafed, but, seeing that the 
King was about to repeat his words, an ironic 
assurance was roughly given that Edgeworth would 
be duly attended to. 

The executioners next surrounded the King with 
intent to undress him; but he proudly forestalled 
their efforts by undoing his collar and opening his 
shirt. They then cut his hair. Their proposal to 



THE ABBfi EDGEWORTH 141 

tie his hands naturally made him indignant, and he 
protested, and would even have resisted ; but, at 
the persuasion of Edge worth, he submitted. His 
hands being tied — behind his back 1 — Edgeworth 
helped him up the steep steps to the scaffold ; and 
from the difficulty experienced in mounting, began 
to fear that his courage was failing. But no sooner 
had the King reached the topmost step than he, 
as it were, escaped from his companion. Traversing 
the entire breadth of the scaffold with a firm tread, 
he silenced by a single glance the noisy drummers 
in front of him ; and, in a voice loud enough to be 
plainly audible at the neighbouring Pont Tournant, 
began to declare that he died innocent of the crimes 
imputed to him ; that he forgave the authors of 
his death, and that he prayed God the blood they 
were about to shed might never fall on France. He 
would have added more ; but a mounted officer 
(Santerre), brandishing his sabre, rode furiously 
forward, and commanded the drummers to strike 
up again. Then, after a moment of hesitation, 
Sanson and his four commis closed relentlessly upon 
their pinioned victim and thrust him under the 
axe. . . . 

Here, practically, finishes Edgeworth's story of 
the crowded eighteen hours between four o'clock in 
the afternoon of Sunday, January 20, 1793, and 
twenty-two minutes past ten on Monday the 21st, 
during which he must have been in almost continuous 
attendance on Louis XVI. 2 It will be noted that 
Edgeworth makes no reference to the traditional 
' Son of St. Louis, ascend to Heaven ', with which, 
at the supreme moment, he is alleged to have bade 
farewell to the King. As a matter of fact, either 

1 Beaucourt, i. 355, 380 ; ii. 363. 

2 Proems-verbal of the Execution, Beaucourt, ii. 307. 



142 LATER ESSAYS 

from diffidence or modesty, he was usually very 
reserved on this particular subject, protesting, 
when interrogated, that, in the tension and terror 
of the moment, he was not certain what he had 
said ; and there were notoriously many variations 
besides the compact and popular version quoted 
above. This, no doubt, led to its being attributed 
to, or claimed by, others ; and of late years it has 
been customary to assign the invention of the 
apostrophe to the younger Lacretelle, who ' half 
confessed ' that he coined it ad hoc for a newspaper 
report. The matter, nevertheless, is far from being 
free from doubt, notwithstanding Louis Blanc's 
i erreur historique '. Madame Roy ale and several 
of Edgeworth's friends felt assured that he did utter 
something of the kind ; and those who care to 
investigate minutely what may be an insoluble 
question, will do wisely to consult the lengthy 
Appendix to M. de Beaucourt's second volume, in 
which the pros and cons are impartially and ex- 
haustively discussed. 1 

To return to Edgeworth himself. For a few 
seconds after the execution he seems to have knelt 
praying by the decapitated body. Then, profiting 
by the confused clamour of ' Vive la Republique ! ' 
he hurriedly descended the scaffold-steps and made 
his way unopposed through the exulting crowd. 
Presently emerging from its straggling outskirts, 
he hastened to Malesherbes, for whom the King 
had given him a parting word. He found the old 
man in tears. Soon himself to suffer like his master, 
Malesherbes counselled Edgeworth to fly at once 
from Paris — even from France. But the Abbe was 
a fanatic of duty. He had still his deputed diocese 
and his office to the Princess Elizabeth, and his 
1 Beaucourt, ii. 353-69. 



THE ABBfi EDGEWORTH 143 

rigid rectitude taught him that he must wait. 
With a faithful servant, Louis Bousset, who never 
afterwards left him, he accordingly retired once 
more to Choisy. 

For the next few years his life was that of an 
outlaw, in daily peril of denunciation and death. 
At Choisy he found refuge in the house of the Baron 
de la Lezardiere, whose wife had been guillotined 
on the same day as Louis XVI. The baron lodged 
him in the poor lady's room, and here for three 
months he remained hidden. But he was destined 
to many moving accidents which can scarcely be 
recounted in detail. His danger was not small, 
for Hebert, the late King's own confessor, was 
guillotined in the following year. Edgeworth's 
head, too, was demanded by three of the Parisian 
clubs ; but as it was supposed that he had escaped 
to England, he thought himself safe, and even made 
several flying visits to his flock at Paris. One of 
his letters to the Archbishop, however, went astray, 
and fell into the hands of the Comite de Salut 
Public, with the result that some two hundred 
sans-culottes paid a visit to the Chateau de la 
Lezardiere, and the Abbe had just time to burn 
his papers and decamp. Meanwhile his host and 
family were marched off to the capital to prison, 
only narrowly escaping murder on the road — to save 
their captors needless trouble. Happily, they were 
eventually released. In their absence the Abbe 
had gone back to the vacated chateau. But in 
brief space its occupants had notice of a fresh 
invasion ; and Edgeworth, flying precipitately, 
must have acquired the Shakespearean ' receipt of 
fern-seed ', since, with the aid of knotted hair 
and a civilian disguise of national blue, he actually 
contrived to pass on the road the very ruffians who 



144 LATER ESSAYS 

were in search of him. But although, notwithstand- 
ing this deliverance, he returned to Choisy, it was 
manifestly no longer a place of security ; and after 
going to Paris to bid good-bye to his mother (whom 
he was never to see again), he moved to Montigny, 
near Pithiviers, where, under the name of Monsieur 
Essex, and as a friend of the family, he was 
warmly welcomed by the Comte Louis de Roche- 
chouart. Here, however, his troubles speedily 
revived. An incautious letter to Madame Elizabeth 
was again intercepted by the Comite, and his arrest 
became imminent. The neighbourhood grew sus- 
picious of the mysterious stranger, and secret well- 
wishers warned him to fly farther afield. He did, 
and went to Fontainebleau, making perilous passage 
to that then-sequestered district in a conveyance 
drawn by a horse that had never before been in 
harness. But now the decree enjoining the arrest 
of all foreigners rendered even Fontainebleau inhos- 
pitable ; and once more he had to move. On the 
road to Rouen the diligence was raided by soldiery, 
and the Abbe, losing courage, grew tongue-tied 
with terror ; but by the adroit self-possession of 
a servant whom Lezardiere had sent to aid him 
in his flight, he succeeded in getting away, and 
eventually both he and his faithful Bousset reached 
the sleepy old cathedral city of Bayeux. Here, for 
a time, they seemed safe ; and, being but five 
miles from the coast, access to England should have 
been feasible. But Edgeworth still considered 
himself bound by his office to the Princess Elizabeth ; 
and while there was any chance of serving or saving 
her he could not make up his mind to leave the 
country. Therefore, exposed to many hazards, 
he remained at Bayeux, where he was joined by 
Lezardiere, who by this date had lost nearly all 



THE ABBfi EDGEWORTH 145 

his family. It was at Bayeux that the Abbe, too, 
heard of the imprisonment of his sister and mother 
in the convent of the Austin mms, where, it is sup- 
posed, Mrs. Edgeworth fell ill and died. 1 Then, 
in May 1794, following the execution of Marie- 
Antoinette in the preceding October, came the 
guillotining of the Princess Elizabeth ; and the 
Abbe at last felt himself free to bid good-bye to 
France. But bidding good-bye to France, even 
with England in prospect, was no easy matter, 
although his brother Ussher and others freely 
supplied him with funds. Two years more elapsed 
before Edgeworth, after many perils and disappoint- 
ments, 2 finally found himself landed from a fishing- 
boat on the little island of Saint Marcouf, then 
occupied by British troops. He was speedily passed 
on to England in a man-of-war, and in August 1796 
arrived at Portsmouth. Next day he travelled to 
London and put up at the Sabloniere Hotel, in 
Leicester Square — a favoured resort of foreigners, 
which had also the distinction of including Hogarth's 
old home. 

Henceforth the chronicle of his career is plain- 
sailing enough. He paid a fleeting visit to Edinburgh 
to give the Princess's last messages to her favourite 
brother, the Count d'Artois, then practically 
interned at the northern Alsatia of Holyrood by 

1 According to a note in Alger's Englishmen in the French 
Revolution, 1889, p. 337, Elizabeth, or Betty Firmont (sister 
to the Abbe), was at the Austin Convent from February 23 
to September 26, 1794. She was still living at Paris in 
1799. 

2 He lived, ' forgotten and undisturbed ', in Normandy for 
nearly three years, wrote Louis XVIII to Madame Royale, 
and then went over to England 'without any difficulty'. 
Either the illustrious epicure of Blankenburg must have mis- 
understood the situation, or (which is more probable) Edge- 
worth made light orally of his past dangers. 

/ L 



146 LATER ESSAYS 

fear of his creditors. 1 After a week's absence he 
came back to London, where he was at once sum- 
moned to an interview with Pitt, and informed 
that King George III intended to grant him a pension 
for his services to his brother-monarch Louis XVI — 
a bounty which, looking to the destitute condition 
of many of the French emigres then in this country, 
the Abbe did not then think himself warranted 
in taking. Concurrently, from the Governors of 
Maynooth College, at Moylan's suggestion, came an 
invitation to assume the presidency of that institu- 
tion, which he also declined. Among other interest- 
ing incidents of his stay in the metropolis was 
a meeting at the Marquess of Buckingham's with 
his cousin, Maria Edgeworth, then about thirty, 
and as yet only the author of Letters to Literary 
Ladies and the three little volumes of the Parent's 
Assistant. She was hypnotized by her new-found 
relative, and declares in her memoirs 2 that she will 
never forget the short hours she spent in his 
society. The event, however, which at this date 
had perhaps the greatest effect on Edgeworth's 
coming proceedings, was a letter he received from 
that indefatigable producer of 6 epistolary correspon- 
dence ', Louis XVIII. It was dated September 19, 
1796, 3 from his then pausing-place, Blankenburg, 
in Brunswick ; and it exhorted Edgeworth, in the 
usual unctuous style (and doubtless for publication), 
to lose no time in compiling his projected (but 
never written) Memoirs, and in printing everything 
which his cloth did not forbid him to give to the 
world. Not long afterwards, circumstances carried 
the Abbe to Blankenburg itself, which brings us to 

1 Steuart's Exiled Bourbons in Scotland, 1908, pp. 27, 
39-41. 

8 Montagu, p. 190. 3 Beaucourt, i. 55. 



THE ABBtf EDGE WORTH 147 

ground already travelled on a previous occasion, 1 and 
authorizes an even more rapid survey of the rest 
of the story. . 

While Edgeworth was still lingering in London, 
and hesitating whether he should comply with his 
brother Ussher's appeal to him to settle permanently 
in Ireland, Mile de la Lezardiere arrived from France 
with urgent dispatches for Louis XVIII, which were 
to have been carried to Blankenburg by Mile de la 
Lezardiere's brother, but as he had already started, 
his sister begged the Abbe to undertake the duty. 
Borrowing a hundred pounds from a relative, 
Edgeworth accordingly started for Blankenburg, 
which he reached in the spring of 1797. Here, with 
ceremonious formality, he was welcomed by 
Louis XVIII, to whom he narrated his recollections 
of the tragedy of January 1793— recollections at 
which his Majesty wept copiously. This visit 
decided Edgeworth's future. In a few weeks the 
4 Abbe de Firmon ', as the King called him, had 
become so indispensable to the little group of rela- 
tions and refugees at the three-roomed Court at 
Blankenburg that he was offered, and felt himself 
constrained to accept, the office (unsalaried) of 
a Chaplain to the self-styled monarch. With him he 
proceeded to his next retreat at Mittau, in Courland ; 
and at Mittau took part in the marriage of Madame 
Royale to her cousin, the Due d'Angouleme. In 
1800, a year afterwards, he was sent by Louis to 
St. Petersburg to carry the Order of the Saint 
Esprit to Paul I, who gave him a pension and a 
handsome souvenir ; and he subsequently accom- 
panied the ' Comte de Lille ' and his niece in their 
first miserable flight from Mittau, and with them 

i * The Early Years of Madame Royale,' National Reviexv, 
February 1913, p. 954. 
/ L 2 



148 LATER ESSAYS 

returned once more from Warsaw to Mittau in 
1804. In 1805 he lost his income by the failure of 
the person to whom the proceeds of the sale of his 
Firmount property had been lent. To save the 
pocket of his impecunious royal master (who had 
never paid him a farthing), and actuated also by 
the necessities of others who were involved in the 
same catastrophe, he was induced to lay his case 
before Pitt, then nearing death. 1 He did so, simply 
and frankly, as was his wont ; and an immediate 
response placed him in possession of an allowance 
that more than made up for the loss he had sustained. 
This he did not long enjojr. In April 1807 there 
straggled through Mittau a forlorn train of French 
soldiers from the Grande Arme"e, who had been taken 
by the Russians. Way-worn and wounded, they 
were bound for the town prison. Some of their 
companions had died on the road, and those remain- 
ing were sick and destitute. The Abbe at once 
petitioned the King to let him go to their assistance. 
With the aid of Bousset, he nursed these unfortunate 
men night and day, but several of them succumbed. 
Presently hospital fever broke out, by which both 
Edgeworth and his devoted servant were attacked. 
Bousset, being young and strong, eventually re- 
covered ; but the Abbe's long trials had enfeebled 
a constitution never robust, and it was soon clear 
that he would not recover. Madame Royale, re- 
gardless of her danger, hastened to his bedside, 
tended him with her own hands, and watched by 
him continuously until his death on May 22, 1807. 
Tradition attributes to her a high-flown valediction, 
which (if she really uttered it) reads like a variation 
of the Abbe's much-contested farewell to her father 
in the Place de la Revolution. But it is quite 
1 He died January 23, 1806. 



THE ABBE EDGEWORTH 149 

credible that, when expostulated with on her own 
account, she did, in effect, insist that if others 
feared contagion, nothing should prevent her from 
nursing, unaided, the noble and generous friend 
who had given up everything for her family. With 
her husband, the entire Court, and many of the 
inhabitants of Mittau, she followed on foot his 
simple funeral procession — a procession in which 
it was claimed that all creeds met together. Two 
months later, on July 29, a memorial service was 
held in the Roman Catholic Chapel in King Street, 
Portman Square, followed by an oraison funebre 
from the Abbe de Bouvens ; and ; classic Louis ' 
composed a Latin epitaph. 1 

But such a life, such a death, require neither 
ornate epitaph nor funeral oration. Devout by 
nature, and retiring by temperament, Edgeworth, 
at the outset, had seemed to rank with those for 
whom the daily round, the ' common task ', suffice ; 
and who, neither changing nor seeking to change 
their allotted place, are contented to leave behind 
them the fragrant memory of a humble and un- 
advertised beneficence. This, at any rate, was his 
case for three-fourths of his career. Then the 
tragedy of 1793 lifted him suddenly to a position 
of perilous pre-eminence, and invested his latter 
years with an aura of sublimity. ' I am now here ', 
he had written from Warsaw in 1804, ' bound to 
the most unfortunate family in the universe and 
quite determined to share their misfortunes to the 
very end.' He did so — with absolute fidelity. He 
belongs to the uncanonized Saints of self-sacrifice — 
the uncenotaphed Martyrs to duty. 

1 On Wednesday, January 21, 1920, a Mass was said in the 
crypt of the Cathedral of St. Denis in commemoration of 
Louis XVI. 



A CASUAL CAUSERIE 

In Prose and Verse 



An Old-time Memento — Tidying up — Dickens and La 
Bruyere — Errata : An Eclogue — A Dilatory Poet — 
Staircase-wit — A Disputed Maxim — On Taking Pains 
— Index-learning — By Way of Preface — Diction- 
ary Readers — Johnsoniana — Aura Popularis — For a 
Volume of Essays — Pictures that Think — Epigrams 
of the War — The Citizen of the World — A Goldsmith 
Illustrator — Writing Oneself Down — Re-reading — 
Herder on Authorship — To a Lady — The Law of 
Restraint — An Old Magazine — What is a ' Conger ? ' 
— c A Dormitive to Bedward '. 



A CASUAL CAUSERIE 153 



AN OLD-TIME MEMENTO 

There lie before me two battered copper medals 
on which sundry burnished and irregular bosses 
serve to represent the half-dozen ships employed 
by ' Edward Vernon, Esq., Vice- Admiral of the 
Blue ', in the taking of Portobello, ' according to 
plan'. This fortunate triumph over the ' whiskered 
Dons ' occurred on November 22, 1739 ; and it is 
curious to note how its ' revival of British glory ' 
seems to have caught on with the depressed lieges 
of George the Second. For a space, the Admiral's 
head (until it was supplanted by that of the hero 
of Culloden) figured on endless inns and posting- 
houses, and the story of Portobello became a house- 
hold word. Fifteen years after date, in a corner of 
Hogarth's Canvassing for Votes, a barber and 
cobbler are still discussing the subject with the aid 
of a quart pot and some broken bits of tobacco 
pipe, much as Oglethorpe explained the Siege of 
Belgrade to Boswell and Johnson after dinner, or 
4 Lieutenant Esmond ', in the Haymarket, aliquo 
mero, made Blenheim a reality for Messrs. Addison 
and Steele. When John Howard went a-touring 
in the prisons, he found the game of 4 portobello ' 
as favourite a recreation with the convicts he 
visited as skittles or mississippi ; and it is also 
notable that at a feast given in London to celebrate 
Vernon's victory, Henry Carey first sang i God 
Save the King '. Finally, the name of Portobello 
survived for many years on a long-existent tavern 
in St. Martin's Lane, a few doors north of the 
church, and not unknown to George Borrow. 
For the original sign of this (amateurs please note !) 



154 LATER ESSAYS 

Hogarth's friend, Peter Monamy, the marine- 
painter, made a popular picture of Vernon's flagship, 
the Burford. 

TIDYING UP 

Among the little miseries of book life is the 
unaccountable (and exasperating) disappearance of 
some volume on which, as it chances, you are 
engaged, and which you have observingly enriched 
with marginalia. It is possible your working books 
are not methodically arranged ; but, at all events, 
they are not absolutely strewn in * nests ' about 
the floor, as were those of the ' unparalleled Peiresc ', 
or stacked away in fireplaces and up chimneys, like 
the unconsidered purchases of a recently-deceased 
patron of the second-hand booksellers. Yet, in 
some spring-cleaning overturn, or pitiless ' tidying- 
up ' by the neat-handed but indiscriminate hand- 
maid of the moment, your treasure has gone — and 
apparently gone beyond recall. There is nothing 
for it but to borrow a circulating-library copy, 
which will, of course, be en lecture ; or to advertise 
through some authorized channel — of necessity 
a matter of time. And, as sayeth Hippocrates 
unanswerably, and, indeed, obviously, ' Life is 
short.' . . . Here, fortunately, one is generally 
interrupted by a welcome feminine voice : ' Is not this 
the little old book you were asking for ? We found 
it on the shelf in the back-room, between the 
Cook's Oracle and the Whole Duty of Man. I believe 
Martha puts all works of a size together ! ' Precisely. 
That is Martha's reading of the law of order. 



A CASUAL CAUSERIE 155 

DICKENS AND LA BRUYERE 

' Annual income twenty pounds, annual expendi- 
ture nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual 
income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty 
pounds ought and six, result misery.' I always 
thought this prudential proposition was the exclusive 
property of our old friend Wilkins Micawber (David 
Copperfield, chap. xii). But it is plain now that it 
must have been what Piron would have called 
a 4 vol $ avarice ' by an earlier writer. Listen to La 
Bruyere. 4 Celui-ld est riche qui recoil plus quHl ne 
consume ; celui-ld est pauvre dont la depense excede 
la recette: That I am not the Columbus of this 
coincidence I cheerfully confess ; it is borrowed 
from Mr. Edmund Gosse's Three French Moralists, 
1918, p. 93. 

ERRATA: AN ECLOGUE 

Author 
This text is not what it should be. 
There are some strange mistakes I see 
I must have missed. For who, right-witted, 
Would dream of putting 4 filled ' for ' fitted ' ? 
Or ' light ' for 4 tight ' ? Or c sleep ' for 4 steep ? 
— Such things would make the angels weep. 

Publisher 

That is so. Still they do occur 

To the most proved artificer. 

You must have failed to cross your 4 t's ' : 

Genius is prone to that disease ! 

Author 
True. (And sometimes, by accident, 
The blunder betters what was meant !) 



156 LATER ESSAYS 

But tell me. What is my position ? 
Correction ? In a new edition ? 
—Those ' new editions ' have a knack, 
Unluckily, of holding back. . . . 

Publisher 
That is because men take more pains 
To feed their bodies than their brains ; 
Or else because they really care 
For little save the lighter fare ; 
And then — though this is poor relief — 
The life of modern books is brief. 
— We'll paste in an 4 Errata ' slip. . . . 

Author 

Which none will look at but to skip. 
No : the misfortune must be gulped, 
Until the masterpiece is . . . pulped ! 

A DILATORY POET 

Touching blunders which better the meaning, the 
locus classicus is Malherbe's verses on Mile du Perier. 
The original ' copy ' ran : 

' Et Rosette a vicu ce que vivent les roses, 
L'espace oVun matin.' 

The printer put : ' Et rose, elle a vecu,' &c, and 
made the lines — to French taste — imperishable. 
Hard-hearted biography, however, has insisted that 
the lady's name was Marguerite ; and the story is 
probably apocryphal. But it is surely piquant 
that it should be related of the most fastidious of 
word-smiths. Malherbe, it is said, would use half 
a ream of paper in polishing a stanza ; and once 
undertook to console the President de Verdun for 



A CASUAL CAUSERIE 157 

the death of his wife. But by the time the promised 
ode was finished, the President , having punctiliously 
performed the prescribed period of mourning, had 
not only married again but departed this life. 
The poet had obviously been tardy in his deep- 
drawn ' melodious tear ' ! 

STAIRCASE-WIT 

If you fail to understand a joke within twenty- 
four hours, your symptoms indicate sluggish 
apprehension ; if ten days should elapse, and you 
are still in the dark, you require professional aid. 
But your case is not beyond hope. As Isaac d'Israeli 
is careful to point out, slow-mindedness does not, 
of necessity, mean dullness. In this connexion 
he cites the Jansenist Nicole, who said of a more 
ready rival, ' He vanquishes me in the drawing-room, 
but surrenders to me at discretion on the stairs \ 
(The Literary Character, ed. 1839, p. 136.) This is 
what the French call ' V esprit de Vescalier \ 

A DISPUTED MAXIM 

One of the most acrid (and certainly most 
familiar) distillations of La Rochefoucauld's axiom- 
alembic is the famous ' Dans Vadversite de nos 
meilleurs amis, nous trouvons toujours quelque chose 
qui ne nous deplait pas \ (Mawimes, 1665, No. 99.) 
Swift, though taking this at its face value as * too 
base for human breast ', nevertheless paraphrased 
it (not very happily) as the text of his wonderful 
verses on his own death. Chesterfield, however, 
professes to defend it literally in a letter to his son 
of September 5, 1748. ' And why not ? ' asks his 
lordship ingenuously. ' Why may I not feel a very 



158 LATER ESSAYS 

tender and real concern for the misfortune of my 
friend, and yet at the same time feel a pleasing 
consciousness at having discharged my duty to 
him, by comforting and assisting him to the utmost 
of my power in that misfortune ? ' The best answer 
to this insidious sophistry is that La Roche- 
foucauld, probably under the mellowing influence 
of Mme de La Fayette, suppressed this particular 
utterance in his later editions. But it has taken 
rank, not the less, as an 4 irrevocabile verbum '. 

ON TAKING PAINS 

4 Perfection is not a trifle ' 

Michael Angelo. 

6 Tis sheer fatuity to spend your time 
In fitting furbelows to toys of rhyme ; 
But — if you must — be sure your verses scan, 
And make your work as faultless as you can. 

INDEX-LEARNING 

Among the short cuts adopted by would-be 
4 scholars and wits.', who seek to escape ' the 
fatigue of reading or of thinking ', Swift (Tale of 
a Tub, Section VII) sardonically includes 4 A 
thorough insight into the index by which the whole 
book is governed and turned '. Nevertheless, 
Index-learning, as the Dean's friend, Pope, seems 
to admit (Dunciad, I, 279), has its advantages. 
It undoubtedly ' holds the eel of science by the 
tail '. Despise it, if you will ; but meanwhile, as an 
alterative, take occasional brisk (and profitless) 
exercise in an uncatalogued library ! Many good 
books call urgently for this helpful clue to their 
unplumbed contents ; and to leave them without 



A CASUAL CAUSERIE 159 

it is to deserve the ' peine infamante ' of La 
B my ere. 

(N.B. — Theoretically, the best person to prepare 
the index to a book is the author. But, in practice, 
he is often the worst !) 

BY WAY OF PREFACE 

{A Reverie) 

' Hoc opus, hie labor est. ' 

4 A Preface ? ' Yes. It might be well, 
If it could make the volume sell. 
But 'tis a thing one may misuse. 

For think— 'twixt ' Qui s'excuse, s'accuse,' 

And the temptation to explain 

Where explanation must be vain ; 

Where everything you try to say 

But seems to give yourself away ; 

And though you pause on every letter, 

Suggests that silence would be better — 

The feat is surely one for those 

Who deal with jugglery in prose, 

And, often, leads to little more 

Than simply blocking up the door. 

Moreover, there are complications. 
If you admit your limitations, 
Review your lapses, or refine them, 
The Critic can but underline them, 
And, to your indiscreet confessing, 
Respond by blandly acquiescing, 
As he, of course, is free to do 
(In his place you would do it too !). 



160 LATER ESSAYS 

Thus, by the give-and-take of war, 
You merely hoist with your petar ; 
In other words, for all your candour, 
Get nothing but a neat back-hand er S 

No. On the whole, 'twere surely best 
To let a risky matter rest ; 
And, in default of special pleader, 
Refer the ruling ... to the Reader ! 

DICTIONARY READERS 

It is easy to speak disparagingly of what does not 
appeal to us ; and I confess to have formerly 
sympathized with the matter-of-fact matron who 
complained that, in dictionary reading, she found 
the story somewhat disconnected. The practice, 
nevertheless, has its votaries, even among the 
sommites litter aires. I knew, of course, from 
Mrs. Sutherland Orr that Browning enlarged his 
poetic vocabulary by a diligent study of Johnson ; 
but I regarded this as the inevitable and negligible 
exception to the rule. I now discover — on the 
unimpeachable authority of Lord Rosebery — that 
Chatham boasted he had been twice through Bailey, 
and can only say I trust it was not the folio of 1736, 
with which I have a respectful bowing acquaintance. 
On equally good evidence, I also find that Ruskin 
assured the late Sir James Murray that he read the 
first part of the Oxford English Dictionary from 
beginning to end. (His subsequent explorations 
are unreported.) ' R. L. S.', too, seems seriously to 
have advocated the occasional perusal of dictionaries 
by writers in order to enable them to - weave into 
the tissue of their language fresh and forgotten 
strands ' ; and this penitential practice, though not 



A CASUAL CAUSERIE 161 

for the same purpose, must have been the habit of 
that eminent historian of civilization, H. T. Buckle, 
of whom it is pleasantly reported that, returning 
a book which had been submitted to him, he cheer- 
fully declared that it was one of the few dictionaries 
he had read through with any enjoyment ! This, how- 
ever, may be a mere coq-d-V due. In any case, these 
are by no means exemplars to be neglected. (Some 
of the foregoing particulars are borrowed — with 
apologies — from The Periodical, vol. iii, No. 53, 
p. 46.) 

JOHNSONIANA 

(Being things Dr. Johnson might have said if his 
speech could have been enriched by some of our 
popular war- words.) 

To Sir John Hawkins, Kt. : 

4 Sir, I perceive objection is your objective. 
But contradiction is not argument.' 

To Fanny Burney (who coloured readily) : 

4 Make yourself easy, my dear little Burney. 
Your blushes do you credit. Nature disdains 
a camouflage? 

Of Mr. Seward : 

4 Seward is hypochondriacal. We must sterilize 
him, or he will infect us.' 

To Edward Cave : 

4 Sir, the book is fundamentally bad. The whole 
impression should be scrapped.' 

To James Bos well, Esq. (who has posted himself 
behind Johnson's chair to take notes) : 

' What is all this, Sir ? Go back at once to your 
dug-out — at the bottom of the table.' 

/ M 



162 LATER ESSAYS 

To Oliver Goldsmith : 

' You and I, Doctor, must contrive to think 
clearly. We must standardize our ideas.' 

To a Mixed Audience (after talking by himself for 
a quarter of an hour) : 

'This discussion has submerged us. We must 
get to the periscope, and find out where we are ! * 

To Mrs. Thrale (at Streatham) : 

4 Do you know how Farmer Catchcrop has 
named his twins ? ' (With a rhinoceros laugh.) 
4 He has called them Zeppelina and Submarina.' x 

AURA POPULARIS 

4 La Popularity ? Cest la gloire en gros sous.' 
Don Salluste in Victor Hugo's Buy Bias, iii, 5. 

The standard of praise is when true judges join ; 
But the cry of the crowd is renown in base coin. 

FOR A VOLUME OF ESSAYS 

Here, with little variation, 
Comes another ' cold collation '. 

Naught, indeed, the taste to tickle — 
Coan lees, or roes in pickle ; 
No comparison between a 
Severn lamprey and muraena ; 
Nothing to derange the peptics 
Of the scholars or the sceptics — 
Only useful antiseptics ! 

1 * To celebrate Peace Week, twins who were] born at 
Bridgend, Glamorganshire, this week, have been named Pax 
Victorious Lloyd and Victorious Pax Lloyd.' (The Times, 
July 19, 1919.) 



A CASUAL CAUSERIE 163 

Naught for Bacchus, naught for Venus — 
Nothing that Nasidienus * 
Howsoever at a loss for 
Novelty, could find a sauce for ; 
Naught, in truth, to please the palate 
Save the dressing of the sallet ! 

If you care for such-like dishes, 
Take it — with my best good wishes ! 

PICTURES THAT THINK 

Both Lamb and Fielding refer to pictures that 
think. Pictures that speak is intelligible as an 
accepted if exaggerated commonplace, and no 
doubt many artists, old and new, are wonderfully 
skilful in reproducing the conventional contortions 
which accompany violent emotions. But 4 pictures 
that think ? i Of how many can it be said that 
they really suggest this required mental condition ? 
A clever critic once observed of a popular novelist 
that few writers had better painted the inside of 
certain characters — adding |?recautiously * so far as 
there is any inside \ It can scarcely be that ' insides ' 
are extinct ; but, for the moment, I can recall but 
one example of a 4 thinking picture ', and that, 
in all probability, only because a print of it hangs 
close at hand. It is Meissonier's Lecture chez 
Diderot. Diderot is reading one of his Salons to 
a group of his friends, whose attitudes, deferential, 
judicial, amused or indifferent, are admirably 
diversified and discriminated. One can almost 
hear the mechanical drum-tap of the reader's fore- 
finger on the table as he rounds off his measured 
periods. But there is more behind. His auditors 

1 Hor. Sal. ii. 8 VI Nasidieni. 
/ M 2 



164 LATER ESSAYS 

are not merely i at attention ' they are attend- 
ing, and the two central personages surely exhibit 
the prescribed quality at its best. It would, I 
fancy, be difficult to give a better outward idea of an 
intellectual effort than Meissonier has contrived 
to convey into these most intent and intelligent 
faces. (The original picture, painted in 1859, is 
in the Rothschild Collection at Paris.) 

EPIGRAMS OF THE WAR 

Daylight-saving 

Men change the Hour, but not the Dial ; 
That stands the test of every trial ; 
For, happily, not e'en the Hun 
Can hope to terrorize the sun. 

The Gourmand's Lament 

The reason is not far to seek 

Why Life has little zest : 
'Tis ' Meatless Day ' two days a week, 

And ' Eat less ' all the rest ! 

Food-control 
The balanced mind is ne'er at strife 
With merely minor ills of life : 
The only wrong it really feels 
Is the suppression of its meals ! 

THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD 

Bacon, in his thirteenth Essay (' Of Goodnesse ', 
&c.) writes : ' If a Man be Gracious and Curteous 
to Strangers, it shewes he is a Citizen of the World '. 
I once thought Goldsmith must have taken the 
title of his reprinted Chinese Letters from this ; 



A CASUAL CAUSERIE 165 

but I see he need not have gone so far afield. 
For the expression is to be found in Addison's 
Spectator, No. 69, on the Royal Exchange : ' I . . . 
fancy my self like the old Philosopher, who upon 
being asked what Country-man he was, replied, 
That he was a Citizen of the World '—the ' old 
Philosopher ' referred to being Diogenes the Cynic, 
Goldsmith, however, may well have had neither 
Bacon nor Addison in mind, for in Lien Chi Altangi's 
Letter XXIII he quotes the words as if they were 
in common use. 

A GOLDSMITH ILLUSTRATOR 

The name of Goldsmith naturally recalls that of 
one of the most successful of his illustrators, Hugh 
Thomson, whose premature death, at fifty-nine, 
has recently been recorded (May, 1920). I had the 
privilege of his friendship for more than five-and- 
thirty years ; and our intercourse, often interrupted 
by circumstance, was never broken or clouded. 
One of his recent eighteenth-century silhouettes 
represented Goldsmith issuing, in florid full-dress, 
from Mr. Filby's shop at the 4 Harrow ' in Water- 
lane ; and when we last met, a few months ago, he 
quitted me with the intention of bringing some 
fresh examples of his skill in this kind on his next 
visit — which, alas ! was never to be. Again, one 
of his tail-pieces for the Vicar of Wakefield, 1890, 
was a pen-and-ink sketch of Goldsmith's favourite 
chair and cane, now in the South Kensington 
Museum — a sketch which I still preserve, carefully 
pasted in William Hawes's Account of the Late 
Dr. Goldsmith's Illness, 1774. 

Mr. Thomson was, in truth, one of the most 
delightful artists of our day — a genuine humorist 
/ M 3 



166 LATER ESSAYS 

and a book-illustrator of infinite resource and 
variety. He was extremely attentive to locality 
and costume ; and, as stated in The Times, had 
' a happy talent for drawing people in eighteenth- 
century clothes as if they were not at a fancy dress 
ball '. But he was far too original to be classed as 
a book-illustrator alone ; and, for my part, I admired 
him most when he was most exclusively and un- 
mistakably himself. I feel sure he was always at 
ease when he could escape from the restrictions of 
an unstimulating text into the freakish freedom of 
a chapter-heading, or a dainty cul-de-lampe, in 
which he could exhibit a ghostly chairman inviting 
a ghostly fine lady to the crazy covert of a tumble- 
down Sedan, or find pretext for some of those 
exquisite ' bits of scenery ' (from Wimbledon 
Common) in which sagacious criticism at once 
discovered the authentic environment of Cranford. 
He possessed Hogarth's sense of the dramatic 
significance of detail ; and his unchartered fancy 
was a bank where he had, apparently, an irreducible 
balance. Many of his performances in this way are 
little masterpieces of playful finesse. Of the 
colour-work of his latter days (when colour-work 
became the fashion) ; of his beautiful book-covers ; 
and of his admirable efforts as a topographer and 
landscapist in the ' Highways and Byways ' series, 
others, with larger opportunities, may be left to 
speak. But to what I have said elsewhere 1 I may 
add that, in whatever he did, he laboured, as Carlyle 
enjoined, * in the spirit of the Artist ', and whether 
the occasion were great or small, conscientiously 
gave his whole powers to his task. 

Of his attractive personality I may here do no 
more than add a few salient traits. He was a most 
De Libris, 1911, p. 109. 



A CASUAL CAUSERIE 167 

agreeable and exhilarating companion — an excellent 
talker and an attentive listener. His letters were 
charming ; and when he commended what he liked, 
he had the fortunate faculty of adding some touch 
of sympathetic insight which lifted his words above 
the level of formal compliment. He was 4 modest 
exceedingly ' ; but his modesty was unfeigned, not 
a mere affectation or a professional attitude. He 
was a truly loyal and affectionate friend. Mindful 
of the liberty of others and of his own dignity — 
he fully realized Livy's definition of a gentleman 
His place, to those who knew him, can never be 
filled. 

WRITING ONESELF DOWN 

Bentley was apparently the first to put this 
idea into circulation. When Dr. Sprat (Bishop of 
Rochester) met him in the Phalaris days, circa 1697, 
he bade him not be discouraged by the attacks on 
4 that noble piece of criticism (the Answer to the 
Oxford Writers) '. Bentley replied : 4 Indeed, 
Dr. S., I am in no pain about the matter. For I 
hold it as certain, that no man was ever written out 
of reputation but by himself.' (Birkbeck Hill, 
Boswell's Life of Johnson, 1887, v, 274 n.) In the 
Free-Holder for May 7, 1716, Addison says : * There 
is not a more melancholy Object in the Learned 
World than a Man who has written himself down ; ' 
and he goes on to suggest that his Friends and 
Relations should i keep him from the use of Pen, 
Ink and Paper, if he is not to be reclaimed by any 
other Methods '. A modification of this passage 
was employed by Thomas Edwards as the epigraph 
to those excellent Canons of Criticism in which he 
dissected Warburton's egregious emendations of 



168 LATER ESSAYS 

Shakespeare. It may be added that Johnson 
quoted Bentley approvingly to Boswell at Skye 
in October 1773. (Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 
2nd ed., 1785, p. 338.) 

RE-READING 

1 A mon age je ne lis plus, je relish 

ROYER COLLARD. 

This is my case. Grown grey and slow, 
I choose clear type and larger letter ; 

And if my book be one I know 

And liked before — so much the better ! 

That man I hold in high respect — 
A true philosopher and bold one — 

Who said ' Your new book I neglect, 
And take, with confidence, an old one ! ' 

HERDER ON AUTHORSHIP 

'With the greatest possible solicitude avoid 
authorship. Too early or immoderately employed, 
it makes the head waste and the heart empty ; 
even were there no other worse consequences. 
A person who reads only to print, in all probability 
reads amiss ; and he who sends away through the 
pen and the press every thought, the moment it 
occurs to him, will in a short time have sent all 
away, and will become a mere journeyman of the 
printing-office, a compositor.' x With the original 
German of this passage, translated as above in 
a note, Coleridge concludes Chapter xl of the 
Biographia Literaria. The chapter is headed, 
6 An affectionate exhortation to those who in early 

1 J. G. v. Herder, 1744-1803. 



A CASUAL CAUSERIE 169 

life feel themselves disposed to become authors ' ; 
and its beginning, middle, and end converge (he 
says) to one charge : ' Never pursue literature as 
a trade '. It is curious that this monition should 
have been prompted by Laureate Whitehead's 
Charge to the Poets, 1762, which contains the 
couplet : 

4 If Nature prompts you, or if friends persuade, 
Why write, but ne'er pursue it as a trade ' ; 

and further inculcates the choice of some soberer 
province as a business : 

' Be that your helmet, and your plume the Muse ' 
—words which find their counterpart in Coleridge's : 
4 Be not merely a man of letters ! Let literature be 
an honourable augmentation to your arms, but not 
constitute the coat, or fill the escutcheon ! ' ' Few 
fortunes have been raised by lofty rhime,' writes 
Whitehead subsequently; and the words were 
confirmed of Coleridge himself in one of his latest 
letters. ' I have worked hard, very hard, for the 
last years of my life, but from Literature I cannot 
gain even bread: (Dykes Campbell's Life, 1894, 
p. 240.) With this lamentable utterance may 
be compared the equally significant statement of 
Robert Browning, drawn up March 23, 1880, nine 
years before his death, in answer to the tax-collector 
who had applied to him for particulars as to his 
profits from literature. Among other things, 
he says that he had worked his hardest for ' almost 
fifty years with no regard to money '. The long 
letter containing this remarkable admission was 
printed in the Daily Chronicle for April 28, 1913. 



170 LATER ESSAYS 

TO A LADY 

T^eiat was a mournful man who said — 
' Speak well of me when I am dead \ 
For one may fairly those forgive 
Who like their laurels while they live . . . 
Because I take this saner view, 
I send my book of songs to You. 

THE LAW OF RESTRAINT 

1 Le secret d'ennuyer est celui de tout dire.' 

Voltaire, VP Discours sur VHomme, 172. 

A success or a failure may lie in a touch ; 

But the sure way to tedium is saying too much ! 

AN OLD MAGAZINE » 
1 Tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse.' 

When first we issued from the Press, 
In days less strenuous and prolific, 

The folks who bought us could not guess 
That we should serve for soporific. 

The small-paned shop where we were sold, 

Down a blind-alley in the City, 
Where friendly Bookmen met of old, 

Is now no more — and more 's the pity ! 

That was the Age of Auction Sales, 

When lives of Books were somewhat longer ; 

Our sign-board was The Crab and Scales, 
And he that ' kept ' there, was a Conger — 

1 A tattered number is supposed to speak. 



A CASUAL CAUSERIE 171 

Our Publisher — a man of might 

(As large as Johnson was, and louder), 

Who planned new things from morn to night, 
And owned a famous Fever Powder. 

We scored at first. We took high ground, 
Preached Aristotle from our garret, 

Called Gray ' remote ' and Locke 4 unsound \ 
And gave strange plates of plant and parrot ; 

Our Rebuses were reckoned neat, 

Our Logogriphs were much debated ; 

Our note, in Ethics, was 4 discreet ', 
In Politics, 'twas ' plainly stated '. 

We had our views. In Art and Song 

We were — above all — patriotic ; 
We hated the imported throng 

Of Fiddlers, Singers, Cooks exotic. . . . 

Then matters changed. Our foremost Bard 

(Later a copious rhetorician) 
Found crambo-rhyming far too hard, 

And ' odes Pindarick ', not his mission ; 

Our Fictionist, whose ' High-Life ' page 
Failed to provide the funds he needed, 

Threw up his post for ' living wage ', 
And as a ' Pen-cutter ' succeeded ; 

The cunning Artist, too, that drew 

Our stage Roxana and Statira, 
Flamed out in folio with a new 

(Subscription) Ruins of Palmyra, 

Which he set off to visit. Next 

Our Essayist, the kind, the gentle, 
Whose wayward Humour never vexed, 

Whose Wit was never detrimental, 



172 LATER ESSAYS 

Fell sick and died. Then came a day, 

Day to be draped with black, and banished ! 

When all our sales had ebbed away, 

And what we had of vogue, had vanished — 

When, by some stroke of Fate concealed 
(Or stress of butcher and of baker), 

Our stock-in-trade entire was wheeled 
To ' Mr. Pastern, the Trunk Maker ! ' 



Such is our mournful history ! 

You'll need some tranquillizing slumber. 
I offer it. ' Times change, and we ' . . . 

I am a genuine Back-Number ! 

WHAT IS A ' CONGER ' ? 

What is a ' Conger ' ? a friend asks, on reading 
the above. Bailey's definition (1736) is, at least, 
straightforward. He says it is ' a Society of Book- 
sellers . . . who unite into a Sort of Company or 
contribute a joint Stock for the printing of Books \ 
Here the expression is used as, according to Webster, 
it is occasionally used, to denote a member of such 
a body. The source of the term is obscure. Bailey 
derives it (hardly seriously) from the great sea-eel 
which eats the smaller fry ; but it comes, more 
plausibly, from the French congres, or the Latin 
congeries, signifying the confederation of names 
which cluster so freely on Eighteenth- Century title- 
pages. Pamela was a Conger book ; so again 
was Johnson's Dictionary. 1 The title ' Pen-cutter ', 
perhaps, also requires elucidation. ' Pen-cutting ' 
was a definite eighteenth- century calling in the days 
when bundles of neatly-cut quills were to be found 
1 Cf. The Publishing Family of Rivington, 1919. 



A CASUAL CAUSERIE 173 

in every stationer's shop. Moses Browne, sometime 
Vicar of Olney, and early editor of Walton's Angler, 
was, originally, a Clerkenwell Pen-cutter ; and 
a certain John Duick acted in that capacity to 
Edward Cave of the Gentleman's Magazine. ' Mr. 
Pastern, the Trunk-maker,' comes direct from 
Hogarth. 

4 A DORMITIVE TO BEDWARD ' 

' Sitting with Madame D'Arblay some weeks 
before she died, I said to her, " Do you remember 
those lines of Mrs. Barbauld's Life which I once 
repeated to you ? " " Remember them ! " she 
replied ; " I repeat them to myself every night 
before I go to sleep." ' {Table Talk of Samuel 
Rogers, 1856, pp. 179-80.) They are as follows : 

Life ! We've been long together, 

Through pleasant and through cloudy weather : 

'Tis hard to part when friends are dear ; 

Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear ; 

— Then steal away, give little warning, 

Choose thine own time, 
Say not Good-Night— but in some brighter clime 

Bid me Good-Morning. 

From the Diary of Henry Crabb Robinson (1869, 
vol. i, pp. 226-7) we also learn that he recited the 
same lines to his sister on her death-bed ; and 
subsequently, by request, to Wordsworth in his 
sitting-room at Rydal. Wordsworth got them by 
heart ; and Robinson heard him muttering to 
himself as he paced to and fro that he wished he 
had written them. They are the conclusion of a 
longer poem. 



INDEX 



Abbott's, Dr., Silanus, 109. 

Addison, Joseph, 48, 100, 
165, 167. 

Aikin, Dr. John, 80, 81, 90. 

Akenside, Mark, 16. 

Algarotti, Count, 303, 106. 

Allen, Ralph, of Prior Park, 
3, 7, 44. 

Antitheriaka, Heberden's, 29, 
30. 

Aristotle' s Poetics, 36. 

Athenian Letters of 1741-3, 
reprinted 1781, 19, 25, 26, 
29, 34, 105 : see also Hippo- 
crates. 

Aura Popularis, 162. 

Austen, Jane, 2. 

Authorship, Herder on, 
168-9. 

Bacon's Essays, 164. 
Baker, Sir George, 29, 43. 
Barbauld's, Mrs., Life, 173. 
Barretier, John Philip, 104. 
Barth61emv, Abbe\ 27. 
Bath, Lord, 110, 112, 117. 
Beaucourt, Marquis de, 125, 

138, 142. 
Bedford, 74. 

Bentley, Richard, 167, 168. 
Biography, 124. 
Birch, Rev. Thomas, of the 

General Dictionary, 27. 
Blum, Mme de, 116. 
Borrow, George, 153. 
Boswell, James, 56, 66, 67. 
Brocklesby, Dr., 40, 41, 42, 43. 
Brown's, Memoirs, of 

Howard, 87, 95. 



Browne, Isaac Hawkins, 20. 
Browne, Moses, 173. 
Browning, Robert, 160, 169. 
Bryant, Jacob, 36. 
Buckle, H. T., 161. 
Burke, Edmund, 94. 
Buller, A. C, Life and Works 

of Heberden, 33. 
Burney, Dr., 46, 106. 
Burney, Charles Rousseau, 

46. 
Burney, Fanny, 31, 37, 41, 

43, 46, 68, 101, 120. 
Burney, Mrs. Hetty, 47. 
Butler, Bishop, 105. 

Calais, 85, 112, 113. 

Calverley's Fly Leaves, 10. 

Cambridge, Richard Owen, 
19, 66. 

Cardington, 72, 82, 89. 

Carter, The Learned Mrs., 
97-123. 

Carter, Elizabeth, personal 
appearance, 97-8 ; birth, 
parentage, linguistic stud- 
ies and amusements, 98- 
100 ; early verse, 101 ; 
and translations, 103, 124 ; 
literary correspondents, 
103-4 ; friendships, 105 ; 
her Epictetus, 106-9 ; 
Poems, 110-11 ; foreign 
tour, 112-17 ; habits of 
life, 118-19 ; her circle, 
121-2 ; burial place, 123. 

Castro, Mr. J. Paul de, on 
Fielding, 53. 

Cave, Edward, 101, 102. 



INDEX 



175 



Cecil Street, Strand, 31, 32, 
33. 

Chapone, Mrs., 22, 107. 

Chatham, Pitt, Earl of, 160. 

Chatterton, 36. 

Chesterfield, Lord, 157. 

Citizen of the World, The, 
164. 

Clarges Street, 119, 123. 

Clarissa, 111. 

Clery, Journal de, 131, 136, 
138. 

Coleridge, 55, 69, 168. 

Collier, Dr. Arthur, 52, 53, 68. 

Collier, Miss M., 52. 

' Conger ', What is a, 172. 

Corfe, Joseph, organist, 59. 

Covent Garden Journal, 56. 

Cowper, Wm, 31, 38, 94. 

Cradocks, Misses, 49 ; Char- 
lotte, Mrs. Fielding, 51. 

Criticism, Edwards's bur- 
lesque Canons of, 1-16, 26. 

Cross, Dean W. L., 53. 

Crossley, Mr. Hastings, 109. 

Damon and Amaryllis, Harris, 

58. 
D'Arblay, Madame, 173 : see 

Burney, Fanny. 
d'Artois, Count, 127, 145. 
Daylight-saving, 164. 
Deal, 98, 118, 119, 120. 
Deiden, Baroness, 46. 
Delany, Mrs., 43. 
Dessin's, Calais, 112. 
Dickens and La Bruyere, 

155. 
Dictionary Readers, 160. 
Diseases, Commentaries of 

Dr. Heberden, 25, 26, 33. 
d'Israeli, Isaac, 157. 
Divine Legation of Moses, 

Warburton's, 3, 5. 
Dorking, 35. 



DORMITIVE TO BEDWARD, A., 

173. 
Duncombe, Rev. John, 23. 

Eames, John, F.R.S., 71. 

Edgeworth, The Abbe, 
124-49. 

Edgeworth, Henry Essex, 
his family history, 125 ; 
migration to France, ib. ; 
education, village priest, 
126-7 ; declines offer to 
return to Ireland, 128 ; 
confessor to Court ladies 
and to Princess Elizabeth, 
128-9 ; in Tuileries at 
Revolution, 129 ; his peril, 

130 ; mandate to take 
charge of diocese of Paris, 
suddenly called to give 
ghostly aid to Louis XVI, 

131 ; narrative of King's 
last hours, 135-41 ; hair- 
breadth escapes, 142-3 ; 
offered British pension, 
146 ; voluntary exile with 
Louis XVIII, 147-8 ; fatal 
illness, 148-9 ; character, 
149. 

Edgeworth, Maria, 146. 

Edgeworth, Sneyd, Memoirs, 
131. 

Edgeworth, Ussher, 125, 126, 
131, 145, 147. 

4 Edward Search ' : see 
Tucker, Abraham, 35. 

Edwards, Thomas, his bur- 
lesque code of Canons of 
Criticism, 1-16, 167 ; Son- 
nets, 17, 18-22 ; career, 
18-24, 26, 37, 38. 

Elizabeth, Princess, of France, 
128, 142, 144, 145. 

Enchiridion of Epictetus, 
107. 



176 



LATER ESSAYS 



Epicletas, Mrs. Carter's 
Translation, 107-9, 119. 

Epigrams of the War, 164. 

Errata : An Eclogue, 
155-6. 

Essay on Man, Pope's, 24 ; 
Carter's translation of An 
Examination of, 103. 

Essays, Prefatory Verses 
For a Volume of, 162-3. 



Fagel's library, 117. 

Feminead : or Female Genius, 
Duncombe's, 23. 

Fielding, Henry, 48, 49, 66, 
75, 108, 163 ; his maternal 
grandmother, 49 ; Mis- 
cellanies, 52 ; penalized as 
bail for Dr: Arthur Collier, 
52-3 ; Tom Jones, 65. 

Fielding, Sarah, 54, 56, 57. 

Finch, Lady Charlotte, 97. 

Firmount, Ireland, 125. 

Fisher's, Lord, motto, 94. 

Food- control, 164. 

For a Volume of Essays, 
162-3. 

Fothergill, Dr., 86. 

French Revolution, Alger's 
Englishmen in the, 145. 



Garat, French Minister of 

Justice, 131-2, 135. 
Garrick, David, 58, 61, 65, 

67, 102, 121. 
Gaussen, Miss Alice, A 

Woman of Wit, 98, 120. 
Gentleman's Magazine, 101, 

105. 
George III, King, 43. 
George Eliot's Middlemarch, 

37. 
Germany, Howard's deter- 



mination in, 84-5 ; Mrs. 
Carter's partiality for, 116. 

Gibson, Bishop, 73. 

' God save the King \ 153. 

Goldsmith, Oliver, 75, 92, 
98, 111, 114, .164 ; an 
illustrator of, 165-7. 

Gosse, Mr. Edmund, 155. 

Gosset, Isaac, 68. 

Gourmand's Lament, The, 
164. 

Grammar, A Philosophical 
Inquiry concerning Uni- 
versal, 55. 

Grandison, Sir Charles, 22. 

Gray, Thomas, 38, 56 ; on 
Richard West, 17. 

Great Ormond Street, 82. 

Greenwich, 60, 61. 

Grenville, George, 59, 62. 

Grey's Hudibras, 29. 

Gwyn, Nell, 32. 



Hackney, 71. 

Hanmer, Sir Thomas, 3, 4. 

Hardwicke, Philip, Second 
Earl of, 19, 27. 

Harris, James or ' Hermes ', 
47-69 ; his Three Treatises, 
50-1 ; friendship with 
Fielding, 52=~3 ; marriage, 
54 : literary period, 50-9 ; 
enters parliament, 59 ; his 
The Spring, 58, 62 ; Comp- 
troller and Secretary to 
Queen Charlotte, 64 ; char- 
acter, 67-8 ; literary sta- 
tus, 69. * 

Harris, James the younger, 
60 ; at Leyden and Madrid, 
62 ; M.P. for Christchurch, 
64 ; Ambassador at St. 
Petersburg, 69. 

Harris, Miss Gertrude, 63. 



INDEX 



177 



Harris, Miss Louisa, 47, 63, 

68, 69. 
Heberden, Dr. William, M.D., 
19, 25, 108 ; career, 26-32 ; 
friends and patients, 34- 
44 ; lectures on materia 
medica, 29 ; character, 
44-5. 
Heberden, Mary, 31. 
Hele, Rev. Richard, 48, 49. 
Herder on Authorship, 

168-9. 
4 Hermes ' Harris, 46-69. 
Highmore, Miss, 22, 23. 
Hippocrates, An Eigh- 
teenth Century, 27-45. 
Hoadly, Rev. John, 57. 
Hogarth, William, 57, 145, 
153, 166 ; ' Distressed 
.Poet ', 2 ; ' Beer Street \ 
16 ; two Progresses, 75 ; 
Committee on the Fleet 
prison, 75 ; at Calais, 112, 
113. 
Howard, The Journeys of 

John, 70-96. 
Howard, John, statue and 
portrait, 70, 71, 90 ; life 
story, 71-2, 124 ; captivity 
at Brest, 72 ; marriages, 
72, 73 ; his son, 73, 90, 91, 
92 ; High Sheriff of Bed- 
ford, 74 ; jail inspection, 
its horrors, 77-9, 153 ; 
thanks of Parliament, 79 ; 
family resources, 71, 82 ; 
foreign tours, 71, 80, 83, 
86, 92 ; anecdotes, 84 ; 
visits lazarettos, 88 ; meets 
Emperor Joseph II and 
John Wesley, 91 ; death, 
burial, and tributes, 93- 
4 ; character, 77, 81, 95, 
96. 
Hulse, Sir Edward, 30. 



Illustrator, A Goldsmith, 

165-7. 
Index-Learning, 158. 

Jail fever, 77, 78, 80, 85. 

James, Dr., Fever Powder, 
92, 93. 

Jeans, Rev. Dr., 70. 

Jensen, Prof. Gerard, 53. 

Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 5, 6, 7, 
13, 23, 29, 39, 41, 55, 
56, 66, 67, 99, 101-2, 109, 
121, 168 ; last illness, 42. 

JOHNSONIANA, 161. 

Jones, Sir William, 36, 37. 
Jones, the Welsh harper, 46. 

Kingsgate, Lord Holland's 
villa at, 38. 

La Bruyere, 155, 159. 

La Fayette, Mine de, 158. 

Lamb, Charles, 99, 163. 

Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 97. 

Lazarettos, Howard's Account 
of the Principal, 91-2. 

Lee, Sir .Sidney, 5. 

Leeds, Miss, 73. 

Leicester Square, Sabloniere 
Hotel, 145. 

Letherland, Dr. Joseph, 31. 

Ley den, 62. 

L^zardiere, Baron de la, 143, 
144. 

Life, Mrs. Barbauld's, 173. 

Light of Nature Pursued, 35. 

London, Johnson's, 102. 

Lord Mayor's Show bv water, 
61. 

Louis XVI, Marq. de Beau- 
court's CaptiviU, &c. de, 
125, 138, 142. 

Louis XVI of France, Cap- 
tivity and last hours, 132- 
41, 149. 



178 



LATER ESSAYS 



Louis XVIII, 145, 146. 
Loutherbourg, Philip de, 63. 
Lowth, Bishop, 55, 65, 69. 
Lyttelton, Lord, 110, 121, 
122. 



Macmichael, Dr., The Gold- 
headed Cane, 30, 35, 37. 

Malesherbes, Lamoignon de, 
131, 142. 

Malherbe, Francois de, 156. 

Malmesbury, First Lord, 48, 
50 ; Letters of, 54, 70. 

Malone, Edmund, 4, 7. 

Markland, Jeremiah, 35 ; his 
Supplices and Iphigenias, 
35. 

Middleton, Conyers, 34. 

Maxim, A Disputed, 157. 

Mead, Dr., 31, 44. 

Meissonier's Lecture chez- 
Diderot, 163. 

Melancholy, Mrs. Carter's 
Ode to, 110. 

4 Mithridate ', 25, 29. 

Milton Court, Dorking, 35. 

Moleville, Bertrand de, 125. 

Monamy, Peter, 154. 

Montagu,LadyMaryWortley, 
107. 

Montagu, Mrs., 110, 115, 120, 
121. 

Montagu, Violette M., Abbe 
Edgeworth, 125. 

More, Hannah, 41, 67, 121. 

Moore, Sir Norman, M.D., 
33. 

Movlan, John, R.C. Bishop 
of Cork, 126, 146. 

Mulso, Hester, 22, 107. 

Murray, Wm., Earl of Mans- 
field, 3. 

Mythology, Bryant's Analysis 
of Ancient, 37. 



Newton, Sir Isaac, his house, 
46 ; Philosophy explained, 
103. 

Nicole, the Jansenist, 157. 

Oglethorpe, General, 75, 153. 
Old Magazine, An, 170. 
Old-time Memento, An, 

153-4. 
Onslow, Mr. Speaker Arthur. 

20. 
Orr, Mrs. Sutherland, 160. 
Osnaburg, Bishop of, 61. 

Pall Mall, 32. 

Parallel passages, 155. 

' Parson Thwackum ', Field- 
ing's, 48-9. 

Pennington's Memoirs of 
Mrs. Carter, 97. 

Philological Inquiries, Har- 
ris's, 66. 

Philosophical Arrangements, 
Harris's, 64-5. 

Pictures that Think, 163-4. 

Pitt, William, the younger, 
62, 146, 148. 

Piombi prison, Venice, 84. 

Poet, A Dilatory, 156-7. 

Poison in rings, 30. 

Pope, Alex., 1, 2, 3, 4, 14, 24, 
44, 63, 102 ; Essay on 
Man, 103. 

Popham, Mr., M.P., 75, 79. 

Portman Square, Mrs. Mon- 
tagu's house in, 68. 

Portobello, 153. 

Powell, the actor, 61. 

Preface, By Way of, 159- 
60. 

Prince Charlie, the Young 
Pretender, 74. 

Prisons, Eighteenth century, 
74-6 ; Howard's State of 



INDEX 



179 



the, 76-8, 81, 82, 85, 92 ; 
Appendix, 85, 87. 
Prophets, Bishop Newcome's 
Twelve Minor, 29. 

Rambler, Johnson's, 109. 
Re-reading, 168. 
Restraint, The Law of, 

170. 
Reynolds, 66, 67. 
Richardson, Samuel, 21, 22, 

23, 24, 26, 37, 107, 110, 

115, 121. 
Robinson, Henry Crabb, 

Diary of, 171. 
Rochefoucald, Francois, 

Duke de La, 157. 
Roderick, Richard, 16. 
Romney, 68. 
Rowe, Nicholas, 2. 
Rowley poems, 36. 
Royale, Madame, Duchesse 

d'Angouleme, 147. 
Ruskin, John, 160 

Sacchini, Antonio, 47. 

St. John's Gate, Clerkenwell, 

101, 102, 108. 
St. Paul's Cathedral, First 

statue, 70. 
Saintsbury, Mr. George, 67. 
Salisbury, 48, 49, 50, 59. 
Savage, Richard, 103. 
Scott, Edmund, 71. 
Seeker, Archbishop, 99, 105, 

122. 
Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley 

Cooper, Earl of, Charac- 
teristics, 48. 
Shakespeare, Early Editors of, 

2-7, 10-13 ; glossaries, 10. 
Sick patients and medical 

candour, 39-40. 
Smith, Joachim, 97. 
Spa of 1763, 114-16. 



Spanish Inquisition, 87, 112. 
Staircase- Wit, 157. 
Stevenson, R. L., 160. 
Stillingfleet, Benjamin, 17. 
Stoke Newington, 71, 72. 
Stoughton, Dr., 84, 89. 
Stuart, * Athenian ', 36, 50, 

55, 66, 68. 
Swift, Dean, 157, 158. 

Talbot, Miss Catherine, 19, 
105-6, 122. 

Taking Pains, On, 158. 

Temple, Paris, Towers of the, 
132. 

Theobald, Lewis, 2, 3, 4. 

Thomasson, Howard's ser- 
vant, 77, 84. 

Thomson, Hugh, as an illus- 
trator of Goldsmith, 165 ; 
his originality ; Cranford ; 
Highways and Byways 
series, 166 ; special traits, 
166-7. 

Thomson, James, 75, 106. 

Thrale, Henry, 41. 

Thrale, Mrs., 67. 

Thucydides, 19, 28. 

Tidying up, 154. 

To a Lady, 170. 

Tom Jones, 65. 

Townshend, Charles, 59. 

Transportation hulks, 82, 83, 
85, 86. 

Tucker, Abraham, 35. 

Tuileries, 131. 

Tyrwhitt, Thomas, 35-6, 66. 

Upton, John, 7, 66. 

Vestal Virgins, 25. 

Vernon, Admiral Edward, 153. 

Vesey, Mrs., 117, 120, 122. 



180 



LATER ESSAYS 



Walpole, Horace, 64. 
Warburton, Bishop William, 

1, 2, 3-7, 8, 10, 14-15, 24, 

39, 103, 167. 
Warrington, 80, 85, 91. 
Wells, Prof. Edwin, 53. 
Wesley, John, 91. 
What is a 'Conger' ?, 172. 
Whi thread, Samuel, 73, 79. 
Whitehall, 60, 61. 
Whitehead, William, 169 ; 

Charge to the Poets, ib. 
Wilkes, John, 40, 62. 
Williamson, Dr. John, 17. 



Winterslow House, 64. 
Wisdom, Mrs. Carter's Ode to, 

110. 
Wit, Staircase-, 157. 
Wordsworth, William, 173. 
Wray, Daniel, 17, 19. 
Writing Oneself Down, 

167. 
Wyndham, Miss, 63. 



Yates, Mrs., The actress, 61. 
Yorke, Hon. Charles, 19, 20, 
27. 




















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